


Winter's Wolf King

by Jillypups



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, I can't quit the fluff, Rickeen, Romance, a wee bit of danger, a wee bit of plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-11
Updated: 2014-06-22
Packaged: 2018-02-04 05:29:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 34,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1767220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jillypups/pseuds/Jillypups
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Winter is here and has been for a while. Shireen Baratheon has studied for three years under maester Tarly at Castle Black, but she must head home to her father, King Stannis, in King's Landing. Bad weather makes it necessary to stop over at Winterfell, home to Rickon Stark, king in the north. </p><p>Winterfell is a huge castle, but they cannot seem to keep from bumping into each other. </p><p> </p><p>A probably idiotic AU in which, three years prior, Davos brought Osha, Rickon and Shaggydog from Skagos, Arya returned from Braavos and rejoins the brotherhood and Gendry, and Sandor nopes off the Quiet Isle and rescues Sansa from The Vale. They all reconvene and join Stannis's forces.</p><p>You know. Shippy stuff.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> OH GOD, OKAY. I hope you guys like this. I have never written in present tense before, and never done a non-modern AU fanfiction before, so bear with me. ::screaming internally::

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [picset](http://jillypups.tumblr.com/post/115402926458/winters-wolf-king-chapter-1)

“If you’re not going to pay attention, baby brother, then I’m not going to bother teaching you anymore,” Arya says. She leans against the courtyard wall, and he can feel her forge-hot gray eyes on him.

“I  _am_  paying attention,and that’s king in the north, to you,” he says, though his words are formed through a smile. He and Arya are practicing with their bows, and while he has gotten quite good, she  _never_  misses. Needle is not the only weapon with which she has killed. He gives her a narrow-eyed glare over his shoulder, to which she sticks out her tongue, before nocking his arrow and drawing back his bowstring. Rickon exhales, steadies himself, and aims for the middle.

  _Thwack._

“I told you I was paying attention,” he says smugly, unable to hide the swagger of youthful pride as he walks to the target, wrenching his arrow free from the splotch of red in its center. He turns to see his sister clapping with a mummer’s exaggeration, and he sweeps a bow that makes them both laugh. They continue until the sun sets, early now that winter is upon them, and exit the inner ward side by side, as siblings and friends, confidants and seasoned fighters. Though he is king here (having not bent his knee to Stannis due to the conditions of their alliance before they defeated Bolton and Frey forces together) and is a full foot taller than his older sister, it does not stop her from shoving him between the shoulders when they part ways, she off to find Gendry in the smithy, Rickon heading for the godswood.

The winter air bites at his skin as he peels off layers of furs and tunics, his pants and smallclothes, an old cloak of his father’s, dropping them unceremoniously in a heap by the steaming pool before walking in without hesitation. He dunks himself completely underwater, scrubbing his fingers against his scalp, standing when he feels he has finally agitated the day’s filth off his hair. Shaggydog is there, huge and black and looming, a dragon of a wolf, sitting by the pool’s edge as if he has been here the entire time, and Rickon breathes easier, having his familiar by his side once more.

“Did you hunt today, boy? Or did you just prowl?” Shaggy whines in good nature, panting languidly as if the surrounding air is not bitterly cold. But then, Rickon is as naked as the day he was born and only half submerged in the hot water. Winter lives in each of their veins. The thought makes him grin, and he beckons the wolf to come swim, though his offer is not taken up.

Aside from Osha – the gods rest her soul – Shaggydog is the only other living creature he loves unconditionally; his sisters, Sandor Clegane, captain of the guards, Sansa’s shield and lover, Arya’s longtime love Gendry, are all trustworthy, kind, useful as advisors and he is friendly enough with them. He does love them. But he doesn’t remember Arya from before, or his red haired sister, though he has been told she looks hauntingly like their mother. That does nothing to stir Rickon’s sentimentality; he doesn’t remember  _her_ , either. No, he only remembers Bran, and Bran is lost to them forever, save for scattered, bewitching moments here in the godswood.

Sandor brought his sister from The Eyrie, for which he will ever be grateful, and Gendry followed Arya with the brotherhood when they struggled through the north, and the fighting, to meet Rickon, Stannis’s forces, and the recruited wildlings west of Winterfell. For that they eternally have his trust, but not necessarily his love.

 He gets along well with Arya because she too is a wild thing, she understands him; she rode by his side with him in battle as they killed Bolton men and reclaimed Winterfell, their direwolves following, nearly as large as the horses they rode, snarling with the combined fury of their masters. He feels bonded to Arya, and their wolves are another connection that makes that love easier.

 _Sansa’s wolf was taken from her; that is not her fault,_  the weirwood seems to say, with Bran’s voice, rustling its blood colored leaves from across the wood.

He shivers, sinking deeper into the warmth of the water, and feels chagrined for a moment. He half swims, half walks towards his wolf, lies on his belly in the shallows of the pool, shoulders exposed to the cold, reaching over to stroke Shaggy’s muzzle. The direwolf licks at his fingers, nips them lightly before heaving to his feet, too high up for Rickon to reach now, though he is a tall man. The wolf senses Rickon’s unease, knows it is time to go. He dresses hastily due to the chill of the wind and the chill he gets while staring over towards the heart tree.

“Good night, brother,” he whispers, fastening his father’s cloak around his shoulders, broadened from training and fighting and the tireless energy of being 19 years old. He leaves the godswood, escorted by his wolf as he wanders through the castle yards to the great hall, his long wet hair catching and melting the flurry of snowflakes that now fall from the gray, cloud-choked sky.

His people, half of them from Arya’s brotherhood, half of them wildings, stand when he enters the hall, though he waves them off dismissively with a shake of his head. He is headstrong, stubborn, wild, prone to brooding silences, but he is not arrogant or full of himself, and he does not abide by such formality, though even after three years as king in the north, they still stand for him before each meal he is present for.

Arya tells him that this sign of respect comes from the ruthless way in which he killed Ramsay Bolton himself, how he ordered that both Roose’s and Ramsay’s corpses remain spiked outside the south gate until only the bones remained. He then bashed them to dust with his own rage, stone and hammer in hand, and had to be pulled away by Sandor himself, the only man strong enough, when the last bits of bone gusted away on a breeze. She tells him that their sign of respect come from his no nonsense manner, his loyalty to the men of the north who have stood by him, his selflessness, how he stripped himself to the waist, sweating alongside them to rebuild Winterfell, how he helped Winter Town pull itself back together when the fires of war died down.

 _The north remembers_ , she tells him sometimes.  _They remember a fierce king, his last name Stark, and they honor him by standing._ But Rickon wishes they’d just stay seated.

He removes his cloak, draping it over the back of his chair, and sits, Arya to his right and Gendry to hers, Sansa to his left and Sandor to hers; bookended by sisters and the men who would die for them, who have pledged that they’d die for him as well. He trusts them, as he trusts all the men and women of Winterfell, for they rallied behind the Stark name, behind him as well in his standoff with Stannis, before the latter man agreed to recognize the warden of the north as its king.

“Arya tells me you’re getting better with your bow,” Sandor says, and Rickon snorts a laugh into his cup of wine.

“She’ll tell you that sooner than she does me,” he says. “I am better with my sword than my bow, and according to her, neither skill is up to snuff.” He leans forward, reaching for a small roasted capon with his bare hands before Sansa spears it deftly with the serving fork, giving him a look. He rolls his eyes, and a few wilding men laugh, but Rickon allows his sister to serve him his supper, and he slouches in his chair, drinking deeply from his cup. As it is every night, he is flanked by love; his sisters and their men, who touch each other’s faces and kiss each other boldly, unconcealed, throughout the day. And as it is every night, Rickon Stark, king in the north, feels the acute loneliness that has resided inside him for longer than he can remember.

 

Harwin wakes him the next morning by pounding on his chamber door. Rickon shimmies into his a pair of wool pants and pulls a tunic over his head before opening the door, and Harwin is leaning against the door frame, clutching his side and trying to catch his breath.

“Apologies, Your Grace, but a traveling party with Baratheon banners approaches and is but five miles to the north. We have only just now sighted them, as there was no word sent.”

“Stannis is in King’s Landing, months away,” he starts, but then he remembers that Baratheon’s only child, a girl he vaguely remembers from The Wall amidst the chaos of war, chose to travel to Castle Black and remain there to study with their maester, to help him teach the free folk to read.  _She had wanted to teach me,_  he remembers,  _but I had blood yet to spill._

Rickon swears under his breath and hurriedly finishes dressing. He shrugs into a doublet, swatting Harwin’s hands away when he tries to help him button it, fastens a gray fur around his shoulders and sweeps out of his room, pulling on his gloves, Harwin hard on his heels. “Who in their right mind rides in without sending word?” He is snappish as he prepares himself for this visit. Sansa is already up and is shaking out the cobwebs of the castle; maids are tearing around in the great keep while other servants dash through the courtyard and back, airing out the guest quarters that have remained vacant since Stannis left three years ago to claim his iron throne.

He is not a social man, and this visit provides anxiety more than excitement, resentment more than anticipation. But after checking with his sisters, seeing that their mother’s old rooms are ready for the princess, and the guest house looks somewhat presentable for the rest of her party, he breaks his fast thanks to an unceremonious visit to the kitchens. He takes a moment, in the middle of the courtyard, to enjoy the snowfall as he holds a cup of ale in one hand and a hunk of warm, fresh bread in the other. He tears into the bread as the bustle of morning life swells and hums around him, jaws working as he chews. Five miles away. They will be here soon.

 _Sooner than soon_ , he realizes, as there is a shout and the east gate opens to let in a small party, the Baratheon banner heavy and listless under the increasing snow fall. There are only a handful of men, no more than half a dozen, and no wheel house for the princess, no barrier to hide from her the king in the north, eating his breakfast like a stable boy out in the yard, like the wild thing he is.

  

 

 

There is no merry welcome party for her when she rides in, sitting astride in long pants beneath her skirts, but she supposes she should not have expected anything. To be true, she is surprised Rickon Stark is even here, but he is, chewing on bread like a peasant in the open, his huge wolf behind him lying at his feet. The snow has begun to fall hard, and she is frozen to the bone, despite how many furs are around her shoulders, across her lap. Despite remaining at The Wall for these past few years, Shireen’s southern blood has not thickened as much as she’d like.

She wears the furs and a hooded cloak to keep the snow off her head, and though they met three years ago and he knows her marred face, she hopes the hood does some little thing to hide the greyscale. Her mother has always told her how pretty she would be without it, and those barbs have dug into her heart and there they stay. No matter how learned she could become, no matter how well read and well versed in history, and all the other things she gleaned from her tutelage under their maester, it will always come back to her ruined face, her ruined chances.

A stable hand takes for her the reins of her mount and she is offered a step to aid her in the dismount. She has grown comfortable riding, but her diminutive stature and the pesky nature of swirling skirts renders the use of the step necessary, and so in that manner she is brought down to walk the same earth as the king in the north. She approaches him and he glances back to his direwolf, tossing the creature the rest of his bread before dusting off his gloved hand and stepping towards her.

His eyes rove over her, and he does glance at her ugly left cheek, but only for the briefest of moments, and for that she is grateful. She resists the urge to cover it with her hand or pull her cowl further over her face. He looks irritable, bothered, and she worries that she has inconvenienced him.

“Your Grace,” she says, dipping a small curtsey. Now he looks amused, slightly exasperated, and he drinks from his cup before chucking the rest of the liquid away from them onto the ground. She wants to smirk, if he thinks this rough behavior is going to shock her. She not only remembers him from Eastwatch-by-the-Sea, a savage boy of 16, but she also spent three years at Castle Black, not just with men of the watch but also with free folk.  Rickon bows his head to her.

“Princess,” he says simply, and she looks up at him. He has grown since last she saw him, though his eyes are just as wild, something untamable residing there in the bright wintergreen. His hair has darkened considerably, more a dark brown than auburn these days, and the boyish mop of curls has grown out, straight and wild to his shoulders, and there is snow captured in it, like stars in the night sky. He wears gray and he wears it well. She is about to speak when the direwolf stands and comes forward, and Shireen finds herself standing face to face with the great beast.

“Shaggydog,” Rickon warns, a rough edge to his voice, though when he had greeted her moments before, it lacked warmth even then. Shireen refuses to quake in front of him, the boy king who is two years her junior, so she tentatively, slowly, removes a glove, outstretching her naked fingers towards the direwolf, who lowers his head to sniff them. She gasps when he licks the palm of her hand with a soft, hot tongue, twice, before turning away to amble towards the castle.

Her eyes flick up to Rickon, who stares back at her with a mystified expression, and she curls her fingers over her still-warm, still-wet palm, feeling for all the world as if something deeply intimate, perhaps  _erotic_  (as if she has any experience with that) has transpired between them. The northern king opens his mouth as if to speak, but clears his throat instead and steps aside, his arm outstretched in invitation.

“Forgive me, Princess. Come inside and get warm. You must be cold out here. There is breakfast awaiting you after such an early ride,” he says, and she hears admonishment in his tone, as if she could help the impending weather, as if it is her say when they make camp and when they break it. “Or a warm bath in your chambers if you wish it.”  Her maid, finally approaching after their awkward greeting, raises her eyebrows at the king’s casual mention of ladies bathing, and Shireen swallows a laugh, curling her fingers into a fist as if to hold on to that wolf’s kiss.

 Shireen opts for the bath, albeit she says so in a more discreet fashion, claiming weariness after the ride. He nods, walks briskly inside, and she follows, lifting her skirts slightly to keep up with his long strides.  He asks a large man with a scarred face, passing them by as they walk through the great hall, for his sister Sansa, and the man nods, nodding slightly to her before turning in the opposite direction and disappearing to find the king’s sister. Rickon stops suddenly and turns to face her, and Shireen, still looking with curiosity after the scarred man, turns her head to face forward too late, nearly colliding with him.

Rickon halts her with his hands at her shoulders and frowns, looking at her again with confusion, as if she has spoken to him in a language he does not understand. His hands leap away from her as if she is on fire, and she steps back. “I’m sorry, Your Grace, I wasn’t watching where I was going,” she says, and he waves away the apology, glancing around.  _He is uncomfortable, that much is clear._

“You shall have my lady mother’s old rooms, as they are the warmest of Winterfell and your southern blood will likely appreciate it,” he said as they stand there, waiting, presumably, for Sansa to escort her there.  _He will talk of me bathing, but not go near my bed chambers._

“Thank you, Your Grace,” she says, and there is that wave again, a gesture of irritation, and she wonders if three years on The Wall have stripped her of her graces, rendered her unable to realize if she is annoying others.

“Please,” he finally says with a sigh. “There is no need to call me that.”

“Yet you refer to me as ‘Princess,’” she says with a smile, and he drops his head, hiding a little smile of his own.

“Fair enough. Call me Rickon, please. May I call you Shireen?”

“The king asks me  _my_  permission?” She says, an attempt at banter, lifting a hand to her heart as if out of shock. He smirks, and his manners drop to reveal the wildling boy inside. He stoops, just as Sansa enters the hall.

“First Night may still occur in Skagos, my lady, but not here in Winterfell,” he murmurs, eyes on hers. “Ladies are asked their permission here in  _all_  things.” She cannot keep the scandalized look off her face and he grins darkly before stepping back to let Sansa sweep in to take his place. She smiles beautifully to her, having not heard what her brother the king had just said. Shireen does a double take to Rickon’s retreating form before stammering her introductions.

The black direwolf appears and he and his master return to the cold land of winter outdoors, but Rickon looks at her, once, over his shoulder, as if she is a puzzle to figure out, a cypher to decode, and then they are swallowed up by the snow, and the door shuts behind him.

 

 

Rickon stares incredulously at Shaggydog, wishing he could ask the wolf what on earth he had been thinking. He has never before licked anyone but Rickon; not Arya, not Bran, not even Osha, and she had been like a mother to Rickon. And suddenly the girl from the south comes, riding in with her mountains of furs, her stormy blue eyes and her hair, the color of ink. He shakes his head, wondering how a wolf gets love struck.

 _She has been with Ghost,_  he thinks, and that settles him somewhat.  _She is simply used to them, and Shaggy picked up on that._  But still, Rickon is unnerved, and he rubs his gloved palms together as if trying to dust her off of him.

He tries to keep his mind off the exchange, the bizarre display of his wolf’s affections, by practicing with his bow and arrow, but as the morning shifts into midday, dark clouds come scudding in from the north, chasing away the milder gray, bringing wicked winds and a bitter whip of snowfall that shoo him and the men practicing swordplay in the yard into the great hall. Huge fires are lit and stoked, and braziers stand scattered throughout to keep it warm. He does not see the Baratheon princess anywhere, and he isn’t sure if he is relieved or irritated.

She is smaller than even his youngest sister, and yet now she is more on his mind than the financial straits of Winter Town, which are mountainous, and he does not understand why. Shireen Baratheon is merely a shadow, a rustle of skirts on the periphery of his memory. So he broods over plans for the town’s reconstruction efforts, pushes papers around the large table in his solar, snaps when a maid wanders in to ask if he’d like a fire, which he never does. He has ice in his veins, snow for blood, and the heat emanating from the walls is enough for him. Still, he eventually dozes in his chair as if that warmth is enough to lull him to sleep, and when he wakes, it is with the flavor of salt in his mouth, tinged with a taste of the soft leather of a lady’s glove.

 

He sees her at that evening’s meal, and as his honored guest, she sits between him and Sansa, and while her closeness means he can question why she has come to Winterfell, it also makes him feel odd. 10 minutes into dinner, he recognizes the odd feeling as nervousness, and it makes him want to laugh; he has never felt nervous in his entire life. Scared, angry, elated, yes. Never nervous. There had never been time.

“Thank you again, Your Gr- Rickon, for being so kind as to host here,” she says after they have been served. Sansa eyes him above Shireen’s head when the servants walk by with the courses, and he makes sure to use serving utensils and not his bare hands. “It seems like we arrived just in time, judging by the severity of this storm.”

He looks at her, her damnable jet hair that shines like dragon glass in the soft light from candles and braziers, those stormy eyes that take up her face and even that curious greyscale which, to Rickon, only adds to her strange allure. “We are happy to have you, Shireen, although I must admit surprise at your arrival. Our scouts only caught sight of you five miles before your arrival.”

She sets her fork down, wipes her mouth before turning to face him fully, a frown knitting her brows. “I do not understand; I sent a raven, from Castle Black. I sent one to you, to let you know we’d be stopping here on my way to my father, because of the approaching storm.”

“I received no raven, of that you can be well assured,” he says, sipping his wine and cutting into his roast pork. He pierces a sliver of it with his fork and eats it, eyeing her all the while.

“This is beyond confusing,” she says, looking at him, though her gaze drops and follows the fork as it is lifted to his mouth. Rickon blinks, almost grins at that as he chews. “I sent a raven, I did. I stood there and told the maester I needed to send a raven to the king, and then I wrote my message and he released it." 

Rickon presses a fist to his mouth, swallows his bite, and laughs. “But there are two kings. I am king in the north, not all of Westeros. The daughter of  _that_ king should know,” he says, leaning in with a smirk, intending to rile her.

She stares at him, mouth open before she remembers herself, and then, to his great surprise, she throws her head back and laughs. Men and women below the dais turn, curious, and see the pale, exposed throat of a princess as she laughs next to their bewildered but smiling king. It is a long neck for so petite a woman, and Rickon finds himself battling the urge to stroke, with a fingertip, from beneath her chin down to the hollow of her throat where an iridescent opal nestles.

“I feel such the fool,” she says, though she still laughs, half to herself, holding her head in her hand as if she were embarrassed. But she is too open, too carefree, he thinks, to ever be embarrassed. There is something bold about her. “What a spectacular oversight on my part,” she smiles, gazing up at him, and for a moment he is too dumbstruck to do anything but gaze back, before finally a smile fights its way to the surface of his expression.

He recovers himself, clearing his throat before drinking a long swallow of wine as Shireen returns her attention to her meal. “And why is it that a princess rides from one tip of the land to the other with such a small retinue?” He asks her, watching her chew thoughtfully, push her parsnips around her plate. She turns to him.

“Because my father did not leave many of our men with me; after all, I was with the Night’s Watch, rather surrounded by them,” she says dryly, and Rickon sees that her fit of laughter has loosened her as a cup of wine could do to him.

“And why do you leave now, after three years? Tired of fending off all the crows?” He grins.

She smiles, but it is a cooler offer than her previous smiles have been. “My mother is dead and my father wishes me to pay my respects, as is befitting a princess.”

“Oh, Shireen, I am  _so_ sorry. We did not know Queen Selyse had passed,” Sansa says, leaning in to her as Rickon’s smile fades, as he loses the momentum of their easy banter. She presses her hand to Shireen’s, resting there on her arm rest, and Shireen smiles softly to Sansa.

“It is no great thing; I did not spend much time with her, or my father, really. I am sad she’s gone, but there is no true heartbreak, if I am being perfectly honest.” Rickon lets his eyes roam her face freely as she speaks of alienation from family, and he feels as if she is speaking to  _him,_ and he starts to think that this woman could understand him. Maybe she already does.

The conversation is a tangle now, but Sansa expertly tends to the knots and snarls. They make short work of dealing with titles, calling each other almost immediately by their given names. Rickon, listening through Arya’s interruptions, learns of how Shireen has fared, up north with his cousin Jon.  She tells of her pleasure over teaching not just children to read but adults as well. Sansa explains how she taught Rickon, and Shireen professes herself to be happy for him, to which he shrugs. She tells them how, despite her jape earlier, there were really no men to fend off up there, because her affliction had scared them so much, all but Jon and maester Tarly, of course.

“There is nothing to fear there,” Rickon tosses out carelessly, gesturing to her cheek, and she turns from Sansa to look at him, her opal earrings flashing in the half light.  _She does not believe me,_ he thinks. He sees doubt and a flare of temper, perhaps, something else he knows well. He shrugs again. “Truly, it’s of little matter.”

“Not such a small matter when it is on  _your_  skin, Your Grace,” she says, enough frost in her voice to challenge the storm outside. Sandor glances down to them, and Rickon feels a prickling of guilt.

“Forgive me, Princess,” he says softly, “I apologize if I have offended you.” Rickon stands after refilling his cup, and his sisters, even Arya, protest when he claims fatigue and strides from the room, his people rising in staggered unison as he exits.

 

 

Shireen is taken aback first by his flippant comment, and then his abrupt departure. She turns questioning eyes to Sansa, who sighs. “Forgive him. Rickon, he—”

“It’s all right, Sansa, I remember him from Eastwatch, fresh off a Skagosi boat,” Shireen says truthfully.

Sansa smiles, and it’s a sad thing, though no less lovely for it. “Poor Rickon,” she murmurs, nodding when Sandor offers to refresh her cup. She thanks him, sips the red wine thoughtfully when it’s refilled. “I sometimes forget that while I was fighting for my life in a battle of wits in King’s Landing, he was quite alone, save for a wildling woman and a direwolf.”

“You fought no lesser war, little bird,” Sandor says, his gray eyes a blaze of heat, of anger, of  _love_ , Shireen thinks, if that pet name has anything to say for it. “Simply a different one.”

“I know,” she says, “It seems all the surviving Starks went through some private war. I in the snake pit, Rickon to raise himself in the wild, Arya with her brotherhood, over to Braavos and back again. But neither of us was quite as young as he when he fled.  I mean, gods, the man only learned to read and write when he was 17. And besides, I did have my supporters, did I not?” Sansa turns away from Shireen to gaze upon him, and though she cannot see her expression, she can see its reflection in Sandor’s scarred face, and he is soothed, anger released, under what must be a look of adoration.

They share their moment, and Shireen leaves them to it, looking at the door to the main yard through which Rickon had exited. Arya catches her look, glances over her other shoulder to the door and back again, with a roll of her eyes and a cattish grin. “Hot tempered Rickon, off to the land of ice and snow. Such a contradictory king.”

 “Won’t he freeze out there?”

“Rickon enjoys the hot springs, perhaps on the coldest nights most of all.” Shireen looks at her, questions in her eyes and on her tongue.

“Hot springs?”

“Mm hmm. In the godswood. The pools are fed with hot springs; several of us enjoy them for bathing, but none so much as Rickon. Winterfell was built on top of them; their water courses through her walls and keep us all warm. He gave you the warmest room of all, you know,” she says and Shireen nods.

“Yes, I was told as much,” she says, glancing out a long, thin window. It is closer to midnight than sundown now, and likely to be pitch black outside, but all she sees is white from the storm. “Still, it’s bad out there. Surely they can’t be so warm.”

“I can take you there tomorrow,” Arya says. “It’ll be too cold for you tonight.” Shireen feels a slight flare of irritation; Rickon has told her she’s too southern for these climes, and Arya too has suggested as much just now. Yes, she had been bitterly cold on her way from The Wall, but even Winterfell has a milder climate than there from whence she’d come. She nods and smiles to Arya, tells her she’d like that, and rises, excusing herself for bed.  _Tomorrow, come snow or sleet or hail, I will walk their godswood, and I will not complain._  

 She bids good night to her father’s men, who are feasting interspersed with Rickon’s, and walks alone back to her rooms. Down the long hallway that is lit with interspersed sconces of fire, Sandor is escorting Sansa to what must be her chambers, and Shireen feels a thrill of shock and awe when Sansa kisses him, bold as brass, in her doorway. She presses herself to the stone wall, watching Sansa snake her arms around his neck, pulling him towards her, and he follows willingly, closing the door softly behind them. Jealousy prickles as she thinks of her near imprisonment on Dragonstone.  _This is a wild and free country, a wild and free people, under a wild and free king._

She enters her chambers, wonderfully warm from those magical walls and a roaring, crackling fire in the hearth. There is no discomfort when she undresses down to her small clothes, slips on her shift and dressing gown and undoes her hair in the chair by the fire. Her maid, Isa, is asleep in the adjoining room, so she combs out the tangles by herself. A lady’s maid is not something she’s been used to, anyways. Her mother had insisted there be another female presence at The Wall when they left for her father’s throne. For propriety. Not for comfort.

When she climbs in bed, taking a book with her, Shireen soon feels the weight of the day, her eyes drowsing though she tries to focus on the words before her. As she drifts to sleep, her fingers snared between the pages of her book, she has a fleeting thought of the king in the north, bathing in the snowstorm, his great direwolf attending him.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FYI this is where I got the inspiration for this fic, and for Rickon as king in the north.  
> [Right here](http://jillypups.tumblr.com/post/88706149618/they-called-rickon-stark-the-young-wolf-reborn?utm_campaign=SharedPost&utm_medium=Email&utm_source=TumblriOS>)
> 
>  
> 
> [Picset](http://jillypups.tumblr.com/post/115407217688/winters-wolf-king-chapter-2)

The morning hosts a sky as white as the previous evening had, with a frenzy of flakes falling, though today there are shapes to be discerned below her window. She sees a line of trees through the haze of snow out one window, and men trudging through the snow in the yard through the other. It feels isolated and romantically desolate, and it suits Shireen just fine, considering her lifetime of solitude, though it is exciting having so many new faces to see, new people to meet here.

 Isa enters with her breakfast and as Shireen eats, the maid redoes what she herself had undone the night before, drawing the hair away from her face with two thin braids, starting at the temples and joining as one at the base of her skull to fall, amidst the loose hair, down to the small of her back.

 Arya is true to her word, and when Shireen is halfway through breaking her fast in front of the fire in her rooms, there is a knock on the door. Isa tut-tuts at her when she tries to rise and answer, ans the maid sets down her mending and gets up to unbolt the door herself. She shrieks, a hand flying to her mouth, when a direwolf pads in, paler than Rickon’s, gray where Shaggydog is black. Isa’s instinct is to flee the room, but Arya strolls in right after, blocking the path, and gives the maid a derisive look that makes her swallow her fear and stay in the room, though when she closes the door, she presses her back flush to it.

 The direwolf, obviously Arya’s, takes in the surroundings of the room before regarding Shireen with her gold eyes. Shireen does not stand, though by sitting she is lower than the beast, but the wolf merely approaches, sniffs her slippered feet, her outstretched hand, and then she circles the room, coming to stand by the door, much to Isa’s horror. There is no kiss from this direwolf, and it makes Shireen ghost a finger along the circumference of her palm, remembering.

 “I thought I’d take Nymeria with us to the godswood,” Arya says, flinging herself into the chair opposite Shireen’s, propping her ankle on her other knee. She is wearing woolen long pants under a dress cut up the sides for activity, looking more like a knight in his long surcoat than a lady in skirts, and it makes Shireen smile. She too has acquired men’s pants  to stave off the cold, but she wears them beneath her many skirts, incognito, her own little secret.

 “Nymeria is quite beautiful,” Shireen says, eating the last of her sausage and toast before swallowing the remnants of her spiced wine.

 “And loyal to extremes,” Arya says fondly, gazing at her familiar. “I very nearly lost her, but when I returned, she came back to me. She found me.”

 “Sansa mentioned something about a brotherhood? And then a trip to Braavos, of all places,” she smiles, and Arya returns the smile, though it is mysterious.

 “The brotherhood without banners, where I met Gendry long ago, yes. A large number of them serve Winterfell now and reside here, though there are a few stauncher of the brothers still on the prowl in the Riverlands. When I returned from Braavos, I was able to find them, rejoin them, and bring them to your father.”

 “Now I remember,” Shireen smiles.  _Braavos must be an off-limits topic,_  she thinks, and decides, perhaps wisely, not to press Arya for more information.

 “So, shall we go exploring?” Arya grins with the enthusiasm of a young child, practically leaping to her feet as Shireen stands, but when Arya catches sight of her footwear, Shireen is confronted with a stern look and a roll of the eyes. “Boots, you’ll be needing. Come on, we’re nearly the same size, I’ll loan you some until we can have a pair made.”

 Properly outfitted, they cross the bridge from the keep to the armory, and Shireen pauses in front of the window, letting Arya go ahead, to gaze out into the courtyard from her vantage point. It is a perfect vision of stillness and serenity, as there are no men there at present, and she smiles, her face so close to the glass that her hot breath fogs it.

 “Look, there’s Shaggydog,” she breathes with a smile, as the creature, black as a smudge of ink, stalks across the yard. She wonders if he and Nymeria ever tussle and play as pups do, and what that spectacle would look like.

 “Up to no good, I’d wager,” a deep voice says from behind and above her, and Shireen startles, whirling around to look up at Rickon. He  _woahs,_ softly, as if she were a spooked horse, and as they had yesterday, his hands go to grasp her shoulders, though this time they slide down her upper arms a few inches, and Shireen is swept over with goose bumps. He is in black furs today, draped over his shoulders, more like his wolf than yesterday, and he cuts an imposing figure dressed head to toe in the hue. She laughs weakly, lightheaded from the surprise of him, the nearness of him, the silenceof him.  _He moves as a hunter does, and I am as unaware as prey._

  

 

“I didn’t mean to frighten you,” Rickon says, releasing her arms, clasping his hands behind his back. He has found, in the 24 hours that she has been here, that he enjoys finding reasons to reach out for her, though each time they seem equally confused and taken aback by those gestures. “I was in the armory,” he explains, nodding across the bridge towards it, “when Arya came through and told me you’d be on your way. And then I heard you mention Shaggydog; I had to see what the brute was up to with my own eyes.”

 He lifts his gaze to look outside over her head, but his wolf is out of sight, so he returns it to her. Shireen’s eyes are already on him, and it catches him off guard. Rickon is not used to being studied unawares; that is a job he prefers to do himself. He is not a breathless man, but he finds that it’s lost, now, so he steps back from her.

 “We- Arya was going to show me the godswood,” she says, and smiles up at him, suddenly mischievous. “I hear the hot springs are warm enough to bathe in.” Rickon grins.

 “They are. As I seem to have interrupted you and kept you from Arya, allow me to walk with you. I hope a wildling king is a good enough escort for a princess,” he attempts to joke, offering her his arm the way he sees Sandor do for Sansa. She takes it, tucking her tiny gloved hand into the crook of his elbow. Rickon straightens his spine instinctively.

 “So long as nothing like First Night applies on the way there,” Shireen says wryly. “After all, you  _did_ spend your formative years on Skagos,” and Rickon realizes he is outmatched when it comes to witty comebacks. There is nothing here left for him to do but laugh. “And before you apologize for your cheek, don’t,” she says, and there it is, the boldness he has picked up on in her. “I rather prefer to know what I’m up against right off the bat.”

 Rickon raises his eyebrows at her, and she shrugs, pulling up the hood of her cloak. Today she is dressed in a pale color that hovers between blue and lavender, and her hair is a black river, swallowed up by her cowl before he can fully admire it.

 They descend to the ground floor, and she moves her hand from the inside of his elbow to rest it on his forearm, bracing herself on the winding stone stairs. “I’m in Arya’s boots, and they’re a bit loose on me,” she explains with a little smile, and he is left to wonder just how tiny she is beneath all those clothes, and  _that_  sends his thoughts scattering like a flock of startled birds.

 “There you are,” Arya says from the doorway leading to the godswood, arms folded across her chest. “I wondered where you got off to,” and she avoids Rickon’s eyes, perhaps for fear he betray the secret between them, that she found him in the armory, practically shoved him through the open entrance onto the bridge before disappearing in her unique way, leaving him alone with the Baratheon princess.

 “I got distracted by the view of the courtyard. It’s just so pretty here, all covered in snow. Castle Black, of course, was a gloomy place wedged in the snow, but here it’s almost magical,” Shireen says with a smile, and both Rickon and Arya grunt in satisfaction and pride. He is unsure of whether to release her hand, to drop his arm from beneath it and abandon it, or to continue as escort. But when she slips her fingers back to the inside of his elbow and looks up to him, saying “Shall we?” he has no choice but to lead her on, Arya and Nymeria already within the wood.

 If it is quiet elsewhere in the castle, it is almost unnervingly so in the godswood, when the snow shrikes are silent, and that has made more than one man waver in his opinion of it. Here, Rickon gently releases her, removing her hand with his own, extending an arm to give her free rein to explore. This way he can watch her, and better judge her reaction to her surroundings. She delights him, though he’d be loath to admit it out loud, with her childlike smiles as she gazes around, stepping carefully through the snow towards the heart tree and its black pool. Shrikes call to one another above, breaking the silence that Rickon so relishes.

 Shireen drifts away and Arya comes to him. “Did you apologize to her yet?”

 “For what?” he frowns. He shrugs to add weight to it.

 Arya shoves him in the center of his chest, and he staggers back, glancing to Shireen’s receding figure; he does not want to appear weak in front of her, or bullied by his sister. He turns back to Arya, glowering, pushing her back, albeit with half so much force.

 “You idiot, you stormed out in the middle of dinner.” He frowns, remembering being chastened, pushed away by Shireen’s cold about face. He remembers leaving, preferring to withdraw rather than to offend. He remembers doing what he thought was best.

 “I wouldn’t say  _storm,_ ” he argues, but she rolls her eyes, plows over him with words hissing out like a snake.

 “She is sensitive about her greyscale, you fool, and you made an offhand comment that didn’t sit well. Then you leave like a thunder cloud. She was at a loss, last night. I thought you’d at least make an attempt on the bridge. What did you do, talk about the weather?” Rickon decides to leave out any mention of First Night. He sighs and shrugs. “Well, go on then, say you’re sorry. I’m off to train children before the weather turns.”

 “I have duties too, you know,” he says sourly. She scoffs.

 “Your first duty is to apologize to the princess of Westeros,” she tosses over her shoulder.  _She is not princess of the north,_  he thinks sullenly _._  But still, he walks in the direction Shireen last went, head bowed as he thinks over the previous night.

 He sees her at the heart tree, and she has lowered her hood to better gaze at its white boughs, red leaves, perhaps even to better feel its power and energy. He sees her hair, so much darker than his, the snow studding it with white before melting away to nothing, and he wishes he could reach out and touch it.  _What is it about her?_ he wonders. He is sure to make noise, so as not to startle her as he had on the armory bridge, and she looks at him over her shoulder, the unaffected side showing, and while he is not bothered by the greyscale, still he is struck by the beauty of the unmarred side of her face.

 “And how does our godswood strike you?” He asks, making attempts at a softer voice, still smarting from Arya’s scolding.

 “As impressive,” she says simply. “But this water looks freezing; I see no hot springs.” He smiles and nods his head towards the pools’ direction, beckoning her to join him, which she does. It begins to snow harder, and he glances down to her, to gauge her comfort. She makes no comment, only lifts her hood back in place, so he continues, and Shireen follows.

 “I hope I did not offend you last night,” he says, charging bluntly ahead, and she bows her head to listen. “I, hmm. I am not all that great at conversation, and I left, because I thought, maybe- I did not mean to make you uncomfortable, or to, ah, damn it all,” he swears, sighing. “I’m just sorry if my behavior hurt you.”

 She  _laughs._  He stops, looking at her, affronted. “You really  _aren’t_ that good at conversation, are you?” she says, still tinkling with laughter. He mutters under his breath, and she rests her hand on his arm. “Now I’m to apologize,” she says, exhaling out the rest of her giggling. “You took me unawares, that is all. I’m not used to it being so easily addressed, so quickly put aside. It either goes uncomfortably unmentioned or stared at with not a care given to how that might make me feel.”

 “I really  _don’t_  see the big issue,” he says with a scowl, irritated somehow at the idea of people belittling her, or alienating her for something she cannot help, this laughing, brazen woman.  _Lady,_  he thinks.  _Princess._ “Sincerely, Shireen, to me, it is of little matter.” And before he can help himself, his glove is off and he is ghosting the greyscale with his fingers.

 Her breath catches in her throat, and she draws her head back before relinquishing, submitting to his curiosity. He brushes the pad of his thumb across the span of her cheek, and it is a ridged, rough thing, so contradictory to how the rest of her looks, and he wants to touch her other cheek, to compare. But her eyes are downcast, and he realizes she is ashamed, and that this is perhaps mortifying her. He stills his thumb, resting it for a moment before dropping his hand, sliding it back into his glove.

 “See?” he murmurs, and she lifts her eyes to his. He is sorry to see pain in her dark blue eyes, and hopes he did not cause it, hopes he can alleviate it. “Of little matter. It’s the smallest and most inconsequential part of the whole of you, to be true.” She heaves a sigh, exhaling through her nose, and offers a small smile.

 “Of little matter,” she whispers, and then she chuckles. “Perhaps you are better with your words than you think,” she says, some of her good humor returning, and Rickon laughs.

 “Tell that to my sisters.”

 He brings her to the three steaming pools, and she crouches down, an overturned blossom of skirts and cloak around her, removing her gloves to sink the fingers of both hands into it. She draws them out, startled at the heat, before fully submerging her hands.

 “Don’t get your sleeves wet, they’ll freeze on the way back,” he warns, having bathed in his small clothes only once before that lesson was learned. She stands, shaking the warm water from her hands, drying them on the edge of her cloak before shimmying into her gloves once more.

 “It’s unbelievable. And you truly swim here even during weather such as this?”

 “At least every few days,” he affirms with a smile.

 “Incredible,” she murmurs, seemingly lost in thought as she gazes down at the water, as he gazes at her. She looks back to him and they both smile in unison, and she opens her mouth to speak, but he is denied the pleasure of hearing what she has to say.

 “Your Grace,” Harwin says, interrupting the moment. Shireen and Rickon step back from one another and turn to face the steward, who tells them that there are men from the mountain clans who wish to have an audience with the king. Within Rickon is a mixture of pride and embarrassment to be so addressed, to have his kingly duties mentioned in front of Shireen. He is also disappointed to leave her.

 He bows his head to her and she nods in return, and his disappointment is replaced with a thrill when he sees the frown on her face, the reluctance in her eyes to be parted from him. He instructs Harwin to show her the glass gardens to warm her up, and then he takes his leave of her.

 For the rest of the day, as he sits, settles squabbles and arranges debts to be repaid, pledges support and scolds misdemeanors, Rickon finds he cannot rid himself of his smile. As Artos Flint rambles on, he thinks of a woman with snow in her hair, an opal at her throat, the kiss of a wolf on the palm of her hand.

 

  

The storm rages on for days, revealing itself to be not just one but several, making captives of them all, even their wild northern king, who rattles around the keep restlessly, his wolf shadowing him. Eventually, on a day when the snowfall is lighter, he sends out two ravens, one to the Manderlys in White Harbor and one to Greywater Watch, requesting a report of the snows there, making sure the road for Shireen and her traveling party will be safe to traverse. Shireen bites her lip when Sansa informs her of this; she feels rather happily ensconced at Winterfell, and it saddens her, to think of leaving for the long, weary journey to King’s Landing, a place she has never called home, all in order to watch her mother’s ashes be entombed. She prays to the seven that winter may last a little while yet; after a moment’s hesitation, she conjures up an image of the Winterfell heart tree, and asks it of the old gods, too.

 For the time being, it seems her prayers work, as the snow falls, and falls, and falls. Men within the castle have to shovel it from the several yards each morning and night, and it heaps in the corners and creeps up along the windows of the glass gardens. The once easy way out of the castle into Winter Town is proven an overwhelming hassle when Arya and Shireen go in search of proper boots for her. Their horses flounder in the snow drifts while townsmen struggle to shovel it out of their way. Finally Arya dismounts, sweeping the split skirts of her in-name-only dress up over her arm and slogs through the snow herself, handing her reins to the stable boy who rides with them, so Shireen is forced to do the same. Arya grins when she sees that Shireen too wears woolen pants.

 “I should have a dress made for you in this fashion,” she says as they make it to the cobbler’s cottage, slapping the chunks of snow off their legs, up to the thigh.

 “I’m fine with dresses,” Shireen says, panting from the exertion. “I wear the pants only for the warmth.”

 “Still, I like knowing you wear them, too,” Arya says, opening the door to step inside. “A little bit of the wolf lives inside the doe.” She insists Shireen have three pair made so she will never have to wear fully snow-damp boots, reminding her that winter has come to all of Westeros and not just the north, that she will need them for her journey.

 When they return, there is news; Rickon’s raven to White Harbor has been answered, and though it’s a coastal city, they report treacherous conditions on the road. He reads the message to Shireen himself, and when he catches her smile in relief, he smiles himself.

 “If I am not mistaken, I’d say the southern princess is enjoying our northern winter.” She smiles enigmatically and drifts off to her rooms for a hot bath.

 “The king is a wise man,” she calls over her shoulder, glancing back slyly, happy to see that he watches her as she walks away, arms crossed over his chest, an amused look on his face.

 

 They are sitting in front of the fire in the library, playing cyvasse, speaking here and there between plays. Every so often he brushes her hand with his fingers, and each time she lifts her gaze to him, and each time he is already looking at her, expression unreadable. She cannot be sure, but she thinks his motives are beyond distracting her so she will lose, and these thoughts make her bite her lip to keep a smile away.

 Several minutes pass, and as she contemplates her next move, he gets up, stoking the fire for her, adding two more logs. She knows this is for her, as he has already shed enough clothing to leave him in his boots, pants and a loose fitting tunic, and now he rolls the sleeves of the latter up to his elbow. She glances over to him, and sees thin patterns tattooed into his skin, just peeking out below the rolls of his sleeves. Her eyebrows lift, and she is about to ask of them when he speaks first.

 “Do you truly like the north, Shireen? Do you enjoy Winterfell?” He turns from the fire and returns to his seat, picking up his goblet of wine. He watches her over its rim. The question surprises her, considering how favorable everything she has said has been.

 “Yes, truly I do. It’s far lovelier than The Wall; there’s more variety here, more life, but still it’s so wild and… well,” she smiles, and he smiles too before drinking the wine. “It’s just so beautiful, here.”

 “I’m glad you like it,” he says, and unless her ears deceive her, he sounds suddenly  _shy_. She looks at him, marveling at this. He grows quiet again, and finally she makes her move, smiling in pleasure at her finesse. He grunts and sets his wine down, steepling his fingers, mouth pressed to the apex of his middle fingers, as he contemplates the board.

 “Is it a place you could ever grow used to?” He asks when moving his piece, taking one of hers with it. She swears under her breath, making him laugh.

 “Grow used to?”

 “To live in. At. Living here,” and though she pretends she is looking at the board, she looks at him through her lashes, and sees him shaking his head at himself. He tries again. “Have we been hospitable enough?””

 “You have, yes. All of you, including yourself whether you like to think so or not,” she smiles, and he grins back to her. It strikes her then how young he truly is, and how heavy a burden it must be to wear a crown so young, so alone. “But I could never really live here, unfortunately. I am lucky to have had so many years of freedom at Castle Black,” she says with a sigh, and sits back, taking a break from concentration. She sips her wine and looks up at him; Rickon is frowning, still leaning over his knees, chin resting on his steepled fingers.

 “Why ever not? Why is it luck that you got three years at The Wall?”

 “You forget what I am princess of,” she says softly. “I am to inherit my father’s throne. I must sit upon it, when he dies, for there are no other heirs, and he will have me home, not just to inter my mother’s ashes but to learn the ways of kings, so that I may be a good queen.”

 He bows his head, lowering his hands to fold his forearms across his knees. “I must admit, I did forget, I suppose,” he says, and his voice is a drowned flag, heavy and joyless. “A pity then, you chose to spend your time on The Wall and not here,” he follows up, and when next he moves a piece of his on the board, bringing it next to where her hand hovers, his thumb brushes the edge of her palm and lingers, and they both stare at this touch longer than either could say.

 

  

Arya hangs up her quiver and bow, unlacing her leather arm guard before wearily climbing the stairs of the armory and out onto the bridge, shoulders and arms crying out for a hot bath. She is rolling her right shoulder, wincing at the soreness when she notices her sister standing at the window facing the east gate, a soft small smile playing about her mouth. It is a smile of secrets, maybe one of smugness, and it piques Arya’s curiosity. She comes to stand by her sister and looks down to riddle out what she finds so amusing.

 Shireen and Rickon are standing close to the gate, secluded from the regular hustle and bustle that usually occurs in the larger space between stable and kitchen, library and smithy. Their heads are bent together and Rickon is gesturing with one arm while Shireen seems to be listening. She pushes his arm down and he stops mid-gesticulation, looking down at her. Something is spoken, and then they both laugh together, Shireen’s head thrown back, Rickon shaking his head as he walks away from her, shoulders shaking. She dashes the few feet towards him and it is her turn to talk, wave her gloved hands in the cold air.

 The snowfall returns, as it does nearly every day as of late. Sansa inhales sharply when Rickon squares Shireen to him, stopping her saying whatever it is she is saying, so that he may lift her hood and cover her hair, her head, from the flakes falling from the iron sky above them. When he smoothes her cloak down over her shoulders, Sansa finally lets go of that breath. Without even acknowledging her younger sister’s presence with her gaze or her voice, Sansa rests her hand lightly, warmly, sweetly, on Arya’s aching shoulder, and Arya knows why she is so moved. It is singlehandedly one of the most tender gestures, most thoughtful acts they have seen from their youngest brother, the only one they have left.

 “She has bewitched him,” Arya says with a grin. She folds her arms over her chest, ignoring the burn of tightening, weary muscles across her shoulder blades. “And I mean that it in the fondest, most wonderful way possible.”

 “I love her,” Sansa says, turning once Shireen takes Rickon by the arm and he leads her beneath the bridge, off for some other exploration or adventure. “I well and truly do. She is such a lovely person, clever and witty, but so  _kind_. He needs kind,” she says, her Tully blue eyes glittering with emotion. Arya covers the elegant hand on her shoulder with her own, squeezing gently.

 “We all need and deserve kind, and the two of us have found it. It looks as if Rickon finally has, as well.” The two sisters cross the bridge to look out of the opposite window after the king and the princess, but they have disappeared, and it gives Arya hope that they are hidden somewhere, hands all over each other. “She would make a stellar queen for him. All evenness and measure to his ups and downs.”

 “The gods had her send the wrong raven,” Sansa says with conviction. “The gods, old and new, gave us these storms, this snow, to bring a princess to our king, our baby brother, and allow them to fall in love.”

 Arya could not put it better.

  

 

He leads her through the wolfswood on horseback, a quiver of arrows on his back, his bow slung across his body, and a sheathed sword at his hip that bobs from the horse’s steady gait beneath it. Their horses are massive, shaggy-hooved beasts, not meant for the swiftness of a hunt though Rickon seems armed to the teeth for a simple forest ride.

 The snow is still falling but here in the wood the severity of the near constant blizzard conditions is lessened; the trees are thick and the canopy above, comprised of so many types of leaf and needle, allows for only a sparse snowfall to filter through. It is quiet and it is still, the only sounds being the creaking leather of their saddles and the soft and steady plodding of their mounts.

 He is following a path, she thinks, though it looks like little more than the empty old bed of a narrow creek, and due to the nature of the terrain they are not able to ride abreast. This is what she tells herself; lately Rickon has increasingly found reasons to touch her, to guide her hand, to still a movement, to brush the snow from her shoulders. But today they have been riding half an hour and he has barely spoken to her, and she has ridden behind him since they left the hunter’s gate.

 This leaves her confused, and worried that he is toying with her, as she is a new face, fresh meat, a new bauble to distract him for a while. It makes her wonder if he touches all the women of Winterfell this way, save for his sisters; does he brush the shoulders of the kitchen girls? Does he run a thumb against the cheeks of women in Winter Town?  _Not that it matters,_  she reminds herself,  _I am passing through, fitting to be a passing fancy._  She frowns, almost scowls deep within her hood, and the beauty of the wolfswood is, for the moment, lost on her.

 Suddenly Rickon reins in his horse and a gloved hand flies up. Though she is no woodswoman, no fighter, no huntress, she is also no fool, so she stops at this gesture and makes sure to stay silent. A roil of panic sloshes in her belly; the war has been over three years, and the north is relatively peaceful, but she has overheard the men in the yard as they practice between snowstorms, and she has heard Rickon pledge handfuls of his guard to the mountain clans to help secure their lands from bands of thieves, pillagers, wildlings leaking in from beyond The Wall, wildlings that have sworn no fealty to Rickon Stark, that have refused to bend the knee, but still want to reap the benefits that come with deference.

 The hand he has raised slowly moves behind his back to grasp an arrow from his quiver, and that simple predatory action makes her chest tighten with some foreign feeling. She watches it slide out, drag out as slowly as if he were pulling a thorn from his flesh, and though the forest is stone still and silent, she still cannot hear him, he is that quiet and calculated. Her heart is racing.

 He shrugs his body out of the recurve bow, painfully slow, and nocks his arrow, bringing up the bow, aiming off to the left. She knows now where he’s aiming, but not yet what he sees. His right arm draws the arrow and bowstring back, and there he stays, motionless, for what feels like hours to Shireen. She is with bated breath, afraid to spoil whatever he’s doing, spook whatever he’s tracking, alert whomever he’s targeting.

 Finally and with a rush of movement that startles both her and her horse, who stamps nervously and tosses his head, Rickon releases the arrow and spurs his horse forward, goading the great brute into a canter. Shireen knows not what he wants her to do, but she decides he would have instructed her were they in danger. She grins for a moment and coos to her horse, pulling the reins to guide his head in the direction Rickon travels, and digs her heels into its sides to give chase. 20 yards into her search, she finds blood on the ground, and follows its trail. 

 When she comes onto the scene, a few minutes later, he is kneeling beside a massive felled elk, and there is a bloody knife in his hand. The beast’s throat has been slit, ending its misery from the two arrows sticking out of its ribs. During his chase he managed to shoot the creature once more, close to his original strike. He looks up when she reins in beside his horse, several feet away, and his eyes are bright and alive, eager and hungry. Shireen smiles, slowly, as understanding takes over her.

 “Well done, Your Grace,” she murmurs. He smirks and rolls his eyes at the title, grabs a fistful of snow and slides the blade of his knife through it before tossing the stained stuff to the ground, and for extra measure he wipes both sides of the knife on his thigh before sheathing it in his belt.

 “It’s a large beast,” he says, coming to her, patting the neck of her horse absentmindedly. “It will feed us all tonight. Do you mind waiting while I dress it? I will be fast as possible, lest you freeze,” he smiles, resting a hand on her booted ankle. Despite the layers of leather and wool and skirts and cloak, she suppresses a shiver at his touch, and something trills inside her like a songbird.

 “Of course I don’t mind. I never mind waiting for a good meal,” she says, and Rickon laughs, squeezing her ankle before dropping his hand and returning to his kill. Shireen watches as he expertly tends to the carcass, and bites her lip. He has shown off for her, only for her, and it sets her mind abuzz and her heart aflame. Once the elk has been dressed, he pulls from his saddle a coil of rope, slips it under the animal’s neck, ties a slipknot and tugs it tight around its throat. He glances up, scrutinizing, and Shireen looks up as well, wondering what he has in mind. Rickon leans back and with an explosion of force, flings the other end of the long rope up and over a thick branch overhead.

 “Well, that’s lucky,” she says, and he grins at her over his shoulder before walking to where the rope now dangles down, on the other side of the elk.

 “Or perfectly executed, if you care to invest that level of confidence in my abilities.” He stoops, picks up the rope, wrapping it several times around his right hand.

 “Of course I do,” she says, shifting in her saddle, captivated by the sight of him working. She has heard of his work ethic and tireless energy, but has not seen him in action. “You are king.”

 “I suppose so,” he says with a grunt as he yanks on the rope, pulling it taut before tying it to the pommel of his great horse’s saddle. And now Shireen understands the need for such massive horses. He checks the saddle’s girth, makes sure it is doubly secure before grabbing his reins and leading the horse away from her and the fallen elk. Slowly, like a macabre puppet show, the animal is hauled up, inch by inch, foot by foot, until it hangs several feet up in the air.

 “’I suppose so’? What does that mean?” She smiles, keeping her voice playfully light, though she suspects she is going to get a glimpse inside him.

 “Well,” he says, leading his horse around the thick trunk of a towering sentinel pine. “I am king, yes, but only because Robb is dead, because Bran is... Bran is immaterial, now.” He pauses a minute, preparing himself, before quickly untying the rope from the pommel, walking briskly round the tree with it before retying it with swift fingers in a double knot around the tree trunk. He pauses, catching his breath. “That is why “Your Grace” feels so empty, so stupid, really. I am nobody’s 'Grace.' I am a dirty, barbaric Skagosi with a wildling for a foster mother, a Stark only in name.” He exhales and walks back towards the elk, leading his horse.

 “Rickon,” she says softly. He looks at her, a shrug of the shoulders at the ready. “You are more than that. And you are no Skagosi. You  _are_ a Stark, and a wonderful king. But, you could always abdicate.” He laughs, and it’s bittersweet.

 “Who would take my throne? Arya refuses. Sansa refuses, but I don’t know if I could ever ask it of her, anyways, considering what she went through in King’s Landing.” He sighs. “I sometimes think she’d do a far better job ruling, but she advises me, at the very least. And there must always be a Stark in Winterfell. So here I am.”

 “I wish I could leave my throne,” she murmurs, and Rickon looks up at her sharply. She smiles sadly. “I do. But my father has no more heirs. My mother is dead. No more sons.”

 Rickon leans against his horse, looking at her keenly. “He could remarry,” he says. “Kings do it all the time. He’s not so old.”

 Shireen laughs, throwing her head back far enough that her hood slips off, and when she looks back at him he’s watching her, a soft, secret smile on his mouth. Their eyes meet and he starts, stands and goes back to his tasks. She thinks there is a blush on his cheeks, but it could be from his hard work; still, though, her heart leaps, hopelessly. “The idea of my father courting a woman and marrying again is laughable. That would call for a miracle.”

 He sighs and shrugs. Shireen bites her lip and says his name, getting his attention.

 “You are king because you fought and defeated, you conquered and you stepped up to rule. That makes you kingly. That makes you worthy. The north needs you,” she says, and part of her thinks  _I may need you too,_ and that part of her curls in on itself in sorrow.

 He smiles at her, saying nothing, and adjusts his horse’s position so it stands beneath the hanging deer, pulling the fur off his shoulder to drape over his saddle, to keep blood from staining the leather. She worries that he will catch a chill, but then, this is the man who bathes in blizzards, who is panting hot breath from his exertion, so she stays quiet. Rickon returns to the sentinel several yards away and uses its trunk as leverage to make sure he doesn’t roughly dump the huge animal onto the back of his poor horse. Once the creature is draped, more or less elegantly, across the fur-covered saddle, Rickon loosens his makeshift noose, re-coils the rope for another day, and drags his hair from his face. She notes that there are strands sticking to the sweat on his brow, and she marvels at his thick northern blood.

 “Are you very cold?” He asks, voice laden with concern, leading his burdened steed back towards her.

 "Yes, of course, but I am captivated by your display. Confidence in the king remains at an all-time high,” she smiles. “Would you walk, or would you ride with me?”

 He raises his eyebrows at her invitation, clearly not expecting it, but nods after a moment of thought. Not missing a beat, he circles behind her mount, leading his horse, and comes up behind her on the other side. He gently draws out her foot from the stirrup and hitches her leg up over her horse's shoulder, reaching over her thigh to grab the horn of her saddle, his reins wrapped round his hand. He slides his boot into the now empty stirrup and hauls himself up behind her, pushing her forward, and she feels a deep, aching throb between her legs as she slides up against the pommel, with his body tight behind hers. There is more contact between them now than all other times combined and Shireen tries her best not to gasp, to flinch, to moan at his sudden closeness and warmth, slowly lowering her leg from her steed's shoulder to reclaim her stirrup.

 “Lead on, my lady,” he says, close to her ear, reaching around her to grab a fistful of the horse’s mane to steady himself in his seat (though she has an idea it is an excuse to have his arm around her, since he is so skilled a rider), his other hand releasing the saddle horn to extend behind them, as it holds the reins of his own horse. Shireen clucks her tongue against her teeth, cheeks burning, heart beating a violent rhythm that she is certain he can hear, or feel, and together they head back to the castle, bodies rocking together with the slow gait of the great horse, in thick silence. This time, however, the silence is crackling with tension, and she can barely catch her breath though she has done nothing but sit and watch him be a man, a hunter, a king.

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Picset](http://jillypups.tumblr.com/post/115417136868/winters-wolf-king-chapter-3)

“I think you brought me luck today on our hunt,” he says to her at dinner, raising his cup to her. Tonight she is wearing a gown of dark, brooding amethyst, setting her pale skin to glow in the light of candles and flame. It is a dress cut lower than northern women are accustomed to wearing, offering a view of her collar bones, which are adorned with a necklace of onyx. Multi-faceted earrings of the same stone glitter like the eyes of wolves in a dark wood, ensconced as they are in the black of her hair. He is captivated. She smiles, lifting her cup.

“I remember being told it was perfectly planned,” she says, sipping her wine, finishing it. He waves to a serving girl, who hefts a carafe of wine and brings it to their table.

“The felling of the elk, perhaps, but not its miraculous appearance,” he says, nodding to the princess’s cup, instructing without words for the girl to refill it. “That I shall give to you.”

Another servant comes by with the platter of meat, and Rickon spears another cut, offering one to Shireen, who accepts with a smile.

“I was not told you were going on a hunt,” Arya says conversationally, eyebrows raised in feigned innocence, as if she has ever been innocent of intrigue.

“You know full well why you weren’t told,” he hisses, leaning in to keep Shireen from hearing this exchange. “Don’t think I haven’t seen you and my other sweet sister, mooning over us and giggling like girls when you think I’m not looking. I’m not a fool.”

“You’re fool enough for her, so much you could play jester at your own court,” she says, and Gendry sputters out a laugh that he quickly tries to mask it by coughing. Rickon glares at them both, and after a surreptitious look to the princess, who is talking with Sansa, he pinches his sister’s arm. She yips like a puppy and sticks her tongue out at him, scooting closer to Gendry lest Rickon try another attack.

“Fool I must be, since there’s no damned point to it. She must rule Westeros after her father, and cannot play at being a wildling queen here in the north. So go aim your japes elsewhere, for I’ve no stomach for them,” he snaps, and Arya drops her mouth open. “Yes, we  _all_  forgot that, I see.”

He straightens in his chair and returns his attention to his plate, slicing off a piece of meat and spearing it with his fork, sliding a withering stare to his sister, who is frowning and talking to Gendry, before resuming his air of nonchalance.

“It’s a kind thing, though, that the animal was an elk and not a stag,” Shireen says, picking up their conversation where it left off, after turning away from Sansa, tilting her head slightly towards him. She is tracing a finger around the lip of her cup of wine.

“I would not slay your sigil in front of you, my lady,” he says before taking the fork to his mouth.

“Though it  _would_ be fitting,” she says mildly, and Rickon chokes on his piece of venison at her implication.

 

 

She has made fast friends with both his sisters, and finds that each brings out a different side of her. With Sansa, they talk for long hours, she reading while Sansa embroiders or, as Shireen spies once or twice, mends Sandor’s clothes (once his cloak, the other time a tunic). Arya drags her around the castle, both indoors and out, with the vigor of a child, though she certainly becomes womanly enough whenever they visit Gendry in the smithy.

He is a good man, humble and respectful, and it is on one gray afternoon, when no snow falls, that she really  _looks_  at him. His eyes, that mop of black hair forever in his eyes as he hammers and pounds away at dented swords and battered helms…  _Those eyes_. He catches her, dips his head and smiles.

“You’re wondering why I look so familiar,” he says, and Arya turns amused eyes to Shireen, who blushes.

“It did give me pause, just now, how similar you look to so many members of my family. Myself excluded,” she jests, pointing to her left cheek, and both Gendry and Arya wave her off in unison. “I swear. I feel like I’m looking at my uncle.”

“His father may be Robert Baratheon, but he’ll never be that fat,” Arya scoffs, then grins at Gendry. “ _Better_  not be that fat,” and Gendry puffs out his chest with a mummer’s swagger, making both women laugh.

“No,” Shireen says, “My uncle Renly. You could be he, when I was a child,” she smiles. And then it dawns on her, and she grins. “We are cousins.”

“We are,” he smiles, “I think we may have several more, or would had the Lannisters not tried to wipe us bastards out.”

She smiles sadly; the sharp word sits ill with her, though he says it casually enough. She tips her head to the side and regards him with what she hopes he knows are sincere eyes. “Does Rickon not offer to legitimize you?”

Gendry laughs, as does Arya, who hops down from the low, crude shelf she is using as a seat, slinging her arms around his neck, kissing him soundly even in front of Shireen. Again, jealousy blooms at how free with their mannerisms and affections these people are (she and Isa stay up late sometimes, giggling over the wanton behavior between one of the kitchen girls and the kennel master).

“I don’t care if he’s a bastard,” Arya says, a cat-with-the-cream grin on her face. He holds her in his sweat-slicked arms that are bare up to the elbows, kisses her back with a hunger that makes Shireen avert her eyes.

“Neither do I. Rickon has offered, though he doesn’t care either, but I have no need to accept the Baratheon name. I mean no offense,” he says after a beat, remembering there is another person there besides Arya and him. “I am a smith, and I have what I want, right here,” and Shireen knows he speaks only a little of the smithy and his home.

Shireen’s heart aches for the ability to deny her name, her claim to the throne as its only heir. The idea of being a lonely, ugly queen scares her, fills her with dread and she knows it is a fate she must one day accept, especially now with her lady mother dead from a fever; no chance of sons now. She loves her father, but not his relentless, near crippling sense of duty. He has traveled the entire realm, it feels, just to claim a throne he never necessarily wanted. It makes Shireen sigh, lost as she is in her thoughts, and Arya breaks free from Gendry’s embrace.

“I’m sorry, we forget ourselves,” she says, a little sheepishly, but Shireen snaps out of her mood, laughs and waves her off.

“Do not mind me,” she says, getting to her feet. “In fact, pretend I was never even here,” she smiles softly, and she slips from the building, the sounds of Arya’s breathless laugh and Gendry’s growling affections at her back. Her envy is so thick she can almost taste it, and when she spies Rickon disappearing into the stables, her heart pounds so hard, with such yearning, that it takes everything not to follow him, it takes everything to walk back to her chambers, where she promptly throws herself on her bed and cries.

 

 

A few days later, Gendry is hard at work in the smithy, stripped to his pants and sweaty tunic, sleeves rolled up past his elbow. It is delightfully warm here, despite the sleet and hail that falls outside, and not for the first time he is thankful for the trade he is in. His blood has thickened, in the years he has lived and fought and worked in the north, but he thinks he will never be as hearty as a Stark, or a Mormont, or a Manderly. It is no matter, though, because his work will always be with fire and steam and heat. It was a misery in King’s Landing, with the smell of shit and piss and rotten foot wafting in to bloom in the smoke and heat of his master’s forge, but here it is a blessing. He is a happy man, with his fires to warm his work, his woman to warm his bed.

The pounding of his hammer is interrupted with the brisk opening of the door, its slam against the stone wall, and the sounds of the storm whipping inside. He glances over his shoulder to see Sandor making haste to shut the door again, to keep the weather outside where it belongs. Once it’s shut, the great man sweeps the sleet-wet hair from his eyes and over his scars as he always does; three years with people who judge him not, with the love of a beautiful woman who likes him the way he is, and still he hides those scars.

“Clegane,” he says by way of greeting. They have come a long way since Sandor won his way out of trial by combat with the brotherhood, and some would say they are friendly. They have in common the unquestioned love of the Stark women, and they are lucky beyond words that the king in the north does not care about this. One of his first decrees was that no Stark be married against their will, and because of it he stalks the land as lonely as a septon while his sisters run free and kiss and love the men of their choice, regardless of birth or merit.

“Waters,” Sandor returns, and holds out a training sword. “Some idiot squire dented the king’s trainer in practice, and I’d like it straightened out before the wolf pup uses it next.” Gendry takes the sword by its hilt and holds it out straight in front of him, tip aimed at the wall, to ferret out this dent.

“Rickon is not one to fuss over such things,” he says, eyeing the ding and making a mental note of it, before setting it to the side and picking up his hammer.

“Aye, especially these days, with the Baratheon princess here to steal his attention,” Sandor says.

Gendry chuckles, and then frowns. “It’s a shame she can’t stay here, and be his queen.”

“If it’s not a queen we’ll be having, I suspect before long the man will at least have himself a mistress, the way those two dance around each other,” Sandor rumbles.

“And then you and I will have something in common with the king,” Gendry grins, and Sandor barks out a laugh.

 

 

It is late one night, the night the raven from Greywater Watch arrives, warning against traveling the snowbound Kings Road, and Shireen finds she cannot sleep. The storms that had plagued the north are sweeping south, leaving bitter temperatures too cold to travel safely in, and it fills her with a happy lightness that keeps her from settling into sleep. She has a little while yet to run loose in this place of freedom.

It is starting to feel as if she has slowly turned into a northerner, far more than she ever felt surrounded by the Night’s Watch; they made her feel profoundly alien from them in all ways, and not just as a southern lady. But here, the wilderness of the wolfswood and the carefree merrymaking of the people of Winterfell at each feast every night, have combined, made a concoction that has lifted her heart and spirits, cracked open her soul a bit to revel in the blinding white of snow, the warm stones beneath her hands when she walks the halls, the magic of the godswood.  _And then there is Rickon._

She tosses in her bed, staring at the ceiling above her, the tapestries around her, the low fire in the grate. She picks up each of the books on the table beside her bed, sets them down again. And then she remembers the window on the armory bridge, the beautiful view of the yard below, and wonders if there is moonlight enough to see. Too afraid to give it a second thought, lest she talk herself out of it and suffer a sleepless night bored in bed, she slips her feet into her new boots made of the softest leather, which protect her to the knee. Wrapped in both her dressing gown and her thickest cloak, a deep blue that is nearly black, Shireen steals down the hallway, knowing well the way to the covered bridge.

There is indeed enough light from a waning moon to see into the courtyard, and though it must be well past midnight, a stable hand comes stumbling out of the kitchen, a flask of wine in hand, and he traipses across the yard, only a little unsteady. She smirks, amused, but wishes he had not spoiled the perfect, untouched blanket of snow.

Fur brushes her hand and she jumps, turning, only to see Shaggydog behind her.  _Like master, like direwolf,_  she thinks to herself, and almost laughs. Though Isa would likely quake in fear, Shireen is not afraid of the wolves, least of all Rickon’s. They have, she believes, an understanding. The black wolf trots away from her, stops, turns to look at her. She frowns. “What? What is it, boy?”

He growls, a low, deep and ominous thing coming from that wide chest, and she takes a step forward where most would step back. His mouth breaks open into a pant, and he turns and trots toward the armory. She follows him, grinning like a girl, intrigued and delighted at playing this game with a direwolf.  _No one would believe me, save a Stark._  They descend the spiral stairs, he in a lope and she in as quick a pace as she can muster without getting dizzy. When the wolf nudges at the door with his massive head, she hesitates, looking down at her attire.

Everyone has convinced her that it is simply too cold for her out there at night, and though she’s in her boots, she is also in nothing more than her shift, a dressing gown and a cloak. She does not want to freeze, and be found dead the next day, a classic fool. But Shaggy growls again at her hesitation.  _You do not have many arguments with a direwolf,_  she thinks wryly,  _save maybe the one and only._ She opens the door for him and steps out after. Her breath is taken from her body as the wall of cold hits her, and she gasps in an attempt to steal it back.

She follows the wolf hesitantly, teeth chattering, until she realizes he’s taking her to the godswood and the she practically runs alongside him. The heated pools. She remembers Rickon telling her not to get her clothes wet, and the thought of stripping naked out here is very nearly a painful one, but then again, the thought of being immersed in water that is hotter than even her warmest baths is enough of an incentive.

Shaggydog pads into the wood, looking back once before plodding on, fanged muzzle open to pant in the frosty air, sending out tufts and puffs of white warm breath. She follows him, wondering if he wanted the hot water too, and needed someone to let him out.  _Idiot, he is Rickon’s wolf,_ he _would have let him out._ And it is as if just thinking of him has conjured him here, and Shireen stops dead in her tracks when she comes to the clearing of the pools.

He is standing, back to her, in the center of the middle pool, his wet hair smoothed back against his head, ending in serpent like curls that vine out across the nape of his neck. Even in the pale moonlight she sees the whorls and spirals and abstract shapes tattooed in greens and blues all on his back, matching the ones she glimpsed on his forearms. Steam rises from his body and her heart aches, both for the beauty of him in this wild state, and for the tempting heat that is practically calling out to her.

The black direwolf approaches the pool and lies down at its edge, and Rickon turns to greet his wolf, sounding for all in the world like a boy with a puppy. He sinks down to cover his shoulders, to warm himself, and then stands again, scratching the wolf’s head. She realizes the water is only to his hips, now that he comes closer to the edge, and a breath hitches in her throat. Rickon starts, snapping his attention to her, and his mouth parts in absolute surprise.

“Princess,” he breathes, and it sounds reverential, coming from him. But then he grins, turning in the water to face her fully, and  _oh_ , it’s a wicked, taunting grin. “I never took you for a woman who bathes naked under the moon.”

She swallows, laughs, and hates how nervous it sounds. She closes her eyes briefly, and shivers uncontrollably as she tries to master her nerves. There is a splashing sound, and when she opens her eyes again, he is on his chest and belly in the shallow edge of the water, holding out his cloak and furs to her.

“I won’t be so crass as to invite you in here with me,” he says, and she wants to tell him it’s cold enough to make  _her_  that crass, “But please, I insist you wear these if you’re going to wander the castle yards at night.” She exhales and rushes forward, closing the distance between them, between her and this naked northern king. She crouches down, smiling gratefully as she takes the garments from him, throwing first the cloak around her and then the furs atop her shoulders. It smells of him, warm and heady, the musk of sweat, the clean sting of pine.

Rickon is grinning at her when she finally looks up to thank him. “So, tell me, why  _are_ you out here? Were you truly coming to bathe?” He has pushed himself back to the center of the pool and has lowered himself so that only his chest and shoulders show. “Or perhaps to watch  _me_  bathe?”

“Of course not!” she snorts, and he lifts a dripping, steaming hand to press it to his heart, as if she has offended him.

“You wound me,” he says, sinking underwater completely. He stays down long enough that she calls out his name, sharply, and then he resurfaces, two hands sweeping his hair back off his forehead before sliding down his face, sloughing away the excess water. He laughs.

“Fear not, my lady, I shall not drown, no matter how broken hearted I am,” and even she has to laugh at his flowery words and mockingly sorrowful look.

“I am here because your wolf brought me,” she says simply, and he turns to look at Shaggydog with a surprised look on his face, but the wolf is gazing back at them, unapologetic, smug even, if Shireen is any good at reading wolves’ expressions. He sighs and turns back to Shireen, mischief in his eyes.

“He must have a soft spot in his heart for you,” Rickon says with his eyebrows raised, as if they are gossiping about a guard mooning over her. This is a banter similar to the ones they have been having, whenever they are alone together; which, Shireen realizes, is often for a man who must be not only lord of the castle, but warden of the north and king of it as well. “After all, he gave you a kiss the moment he met you.”

She is warmer now, burrowed deep in his clothing, and she curls her legs under her, meticulously tucking his cloak in around her to keep away the chill of the ground. If she ever had been too shy, modest, prudish to converse with a naked man in his bath, she certainly isn’t now. “How sad, to only have a place in the heart of a wolf,” she says, trailing off sadly, though a grin curls her mouth.

“How do I tell you that you have a place in mine, Shireen?” He asks, and once more he is on his belly, creeping closer to her. His forearms rest on the pebbles and stones in the shallowest part, barely covered with water. His chest is covered with the same markings as the rest of him, and she hums with the want to trace them with her fingers; suddenly she feels very lightheaded, and her mind cannot form a single thought that makes any sense. She knows that if she looks up, beyond his shoulders, she will see the shape of his buttocks, and that both thrills and terrifies her. “Must I kiss you too?”

“I…  _Rickon,_ ” she murmurs, gaze downcast, and she means to follow up with  _stop, please_  or  _we can never be, there is no hope here,_  or perhaps the one that makes the most sense,  _I should go back to my chambers_. But instead, all she does is lift her eyes to his; how they  _burn_  as they look back at her. “Rickon,” she repeats, voice barely above a whisper, and she barely has an idea of who she is anymore, with this naked king looking at her how his direwolf must eye a deer before he takes it down. For as cruel as they are for throwing her together with Rickon, when they cannot have one another, she feels the gods must have a sense of humor; here she is, a Baratheon doe, about to be slain by the Stark direwolf beside a moonlit pond.

“Give me your hand,” he whispers, and he lifts his out of the water, palm up, outstretching it to receive hers. Great curls of steam drift skywards from his hand and arm. It is as if she is a puppet and someone else is pulling her strings, for she lifts her hand, shaking back the sleeve, and puts it in his, staring at them. Their palms press together, and the heat emanating off of him is powerful and intoxicating, but he uses his other hand to remove hers, and she frowns in confusion, lifts her gaze to him.

Rickon is still looking intently at her, through her and deep into her heart, she feels, as he turns her hand over and places it back in his, knuckles down against his wet, warm skin. He pulls her hand closer towards him, so much so that she leans in, and her fingers straighten against his wrist. He opens his mouth and then his tongue is warm, wet, and soft at the center of her palm, his pale green gaze meeting hers all the while. A fire roars to life at the juncture of her thighs, stoking higher when he licks her again, a total of twice, just as his wolf did the day she came to Winterfell.

“There,” he says softly, releasing her hand, sliding himself backwards into the pond, sinking down into the water to his chin. Shireen shudders a breath and stares down at her hand, how the center of her palm glistens in the dying moonlight. “Now you know.”

After several seconds she realizes she has not spoken, that he is still gazing at her from the center of the spring. As if her heart has stopped and then started again, she scrambles to her feet, dropping his cloak and furs in a pool around her feet. “I’m, I,  _oh._  I need to go, I think, the cold. It’s so cold,” she says, though the fire he has lit inside her suggests otherwise.

He opens his mouth to speak, stands as if to stop her, the water level at his waist, but if he forces her to look upon his unclothed flesh once more, she will lose her mind, she will tear her own cloak off and dive into that pool and let him devour her alive. So she stammers out a good night and flees the godswood, not stopping until she is out of breath in her chambers. She paces, panting, heart racing, and uncurls her fingers from the palm he has branded with his tongue. It is still soft and warm from his administrations, still wet. Without thinking, she brings her hand to her mouth, and licks over the same spot.

_He has slain me._

Rickon doesn’t see her for two days after his bold move in the godswood, and he is afraid that he has frightened her, scared her off with the brashness, the bluntness of his true feelings. He goes over it again and again in his mind, the look on her face, how her entire body tensed up when he licked her, the taste of her hand, the smell of her, the feeling of her small hand in his, cold to the touch, such a contrast the heat of his own. He is impatient with those requesting audience, in a fog when his sisters advise him, and mopes when he is in his chambers.

She eats her meals in her rooms; the first night she sends word at dinner, through her maid, that she is ill from a midnight stroll outside after a lapse in judgment. That one stings, and Rickon gets himself sullenly drunk, slouching in his chair long past the exit of the last member of the household.

The next morning, his head pounding, he is attempting to get down his boiled eggs and sausage in the chill of the yard, seated on an overturned, empty old cask outside of the kitchens. Sansa and Sandor emerge and stroll towards the stables, and he wants to roll his eyes at their love if he didn’t think it would make his headache even worse. He all but snarls at them when they bid him good morning, and Sandor laughs in his sharp, barking way that pierces Rickon though the skull.

“It appears your brother is suffering a broken heart, little bird,” he says with a chuckle, removing her hand and bringing it to his lips before bowing his head to them both and heading to groom and take out his horse, Stranger.

Sansa crosses her arms over her chest and gazes down at him with a humored expression that makes Rickon feel even surlier than usual.

“So, what did you do? Did you yell at her, storm out of another conversation? It was going so  _well,_  Rickon, and now she hasn’t emerged, not even to sit and sew with me, or to ride into town with Arya, which they had planned.  And you two were getting quite close, I must say. The lingering looks, the little sighs when you leave the room...”

“I don’t sigh when I leave the room,” he snaps, and Sansa huffs at him. He stabs his sausage with his knife and bites into it, glaring at her.

“I  _meant_  Shireen, you horse’s ass,” she says, and Rickon’s eyes nearly bulge out of his head. “Yes, I said horse’s ass. One thing I’ve learned from loving a man who never lies, is to tell people what they need to hear, whether they want to or not. So whether you want to hear it or not,you must have done something, because all the signs were pointing to love.”

“Love,” he echoes, and wonders if perhaps he should have just said that, instead of provoking her like the crude man he really is. Rickon sighs and drops his head in his hand, his fork still in his fingers. A blob of grease drops from the fork hovering at his forehead and drops into the snow. It feels like his hopes.

“Whatever you did, I hope you can smooth over it,” Sansa says, resting a hand on his shoulder. He looks up questioningly, and his sister is smiling sweetly. “You deserve to be happy, Rickon. The match is a good, advantageous one, but more than that, there seems to be genuine feelings between the two of you.” She leans over, gracefully avoiding his fork to kiss him on the crown of his head. “I think the gods, old and new, must have conspired to get her to Winterfell and to send snow to keep her here with you.”

“Then it would have to snow until we all die. She is due to head back to learn how to sit the throne, to take it over when Stannis dies. There is no future, so what does it bloody matter?” He hazards a glance up at her, and his pretty sister looks crestfallen.

“Sure there could be an arrangement… Some way to…” but she trails off, and it’s another stab in his heart, to hear her falter.

She turns when Sandor leads out his huge courser, and Sandor’s eyes are only for her when she tosses her waist length red hair over her shoulder before approaching him.  _He is a fool for her, and a fool for her hair,_  Rickon thinks, but then he remembers a river of ink, hair the color of jet, and he wishes he knew its weight in his hands.

The next day he goes into Winter Town to inspect the state of the cottages, he is filled in on food stores for both the town and the castle, he busies himself in the armory, works himself into a fervor training with his sword, teaching a young wilding named Arik, getting bested by Sandor, knocking Ned Dayne in the snow so hard the man bruised his arse, but no matter how busy the day, no matter how wearily he drags himself to bed, on the edges of his mind and nestled in his heart, she is there, and he cannot be free of her, he cannot sleep, he cannot think.

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Picset](http://jillypups.tumblr.com/post/115421539248/winters-wolf-king-chapter-4)

The next morning he is seated at the large table in his solar, hunched over, scratching figures into columns, brow furrowed in a ferocious attempt at concentration, when he is interrupted by his door being wrenched open. His sister Sansa sweeps in, managing to look regal in a knobby homespun shawl, and she glares at him.

He flings his quill down in irritation, sitting back roughly in his chair. He is annoyed; though he adamantly denies it whenever it is suggested, he  _is_  a young king, and his youth  _does_  interfere in the more tedious of his duties. Her intrusion has destroyed what tenuous strides he has been making, and it vexes him, stokes his insecurity in his abilities.

“What is it?” He demands, and she arches her brows in such a way that he feels chastised, without her even speaking. “Sansa, what?” he tries again, a little calmer.

“It is your direwolf,” she says, chin lifted, arms folded across her chest. “He has somehow gotten himself locked into the library, and refuses to let anyone in, even maester Bowen, though the man practically lives there,” she says.

Rickon sighs, rubs his temples. “Has he bitten anyone yet?”

“ _Yet_?” she snaps, and instantly he thinks of Lady, poor Lady, killed as a pup, yet another direwolf he does not remember. He has been told of her gentleness and obedience, and he understands Sansa’s frustrations. How painful it must be, to have haughty Nymeria stalking about the place, while a near feral Shaggydog haunts and lurks in corners and shadows, listening only to Rickon, obeying none but him. He wonders if she wishes she could sacrifice one to bring her own direwolf back; it would be a feeling he could understand. He gets to his feet, humbled, brought back to earth.

“Forgive me,” he says, walking around the table to rest a hand on her shoulder. “I’ll see to him now.” She nods, somewhat mollified, and he heads out into the hallway, the muffled sounds of her slippers and skirts in his wake

He stalks across the yard to the library, flinging open the door, and walking in brusquely, the wolf’s name dying on his lips when he sees the creature heave to his paws in front of the fire, where he had been lying with his head in Shireen’s lap. Shaggy comes to him, nuzzling his hand, circling him amiably. Shireen gets to her feet, looking wary, confused, open book in her hand.

“I… huh,” he says stupidly, bewilderedly. He rubs the back of his neck, looks around frantically for clues, for some notion of what’s going on. His eyes fall on her cloak, draped over a chair, a goblet and flagon of wine on the table next to it, a plate of fruit and cheese. There is a merry fire in the grate. The room is warm.  _She has been here a long while._ He exhales and shakes his head.  _This damned wolf._

“Rickon? Rickon, what is it?”

“I ah, I heard that he wasn’t letting anyone inside,” he said, closing the door behind him when she shivers. “He wouldn’t even let the maester in.”

“Oh, so that was what he – well, now I feel horrible, keeping the maester out. He did, um, yes, he did growl at the door once,” she says, and she blushes so prettily, lowering her eyes. It makes his heart break, because he cannot make that blush bloom in other ways, ways he has dreamed about. “I’m sorry, I was reading, and didn’t think much of it. He’s so wild,” she offers by way of explanation.

“Wild enough to sit with a princess while she reads in front of a fire?” he quips, smiling slightly.

She chuckles weakly, and for a moment they stand there in silence, she backed by the fire, he by his wolf, a span of several feet between them.  _It might as well be an ocean_ , he thinks.

“Why are you here, of all places? You haven’t left your chambers in two days and I’ve seen neither hide nor hair of you, not since- not since the godswood,” he starts with wounded indignation, ends with a whisper; he has missed her, and because he knows she will leave he wants all of her time, anything she can spare, while she remains here. He sounds like a spoiled child, and he wonders if he is one.                                     

“Oh, am I not  _allowed_  here? I happen to like books, and I happen to like  _privacy,_ ” she snaps, closing the book and hugging it to her chest. Her eyes are fierce and he feels her challenge, sees her temper rising. Rickon will take anything he can get from her. He raises an eyebrow and walks further into the room, taking up her goblet and drinking deeply from it before setting it down.

“Poor Shireen, robbed of her privacy,” he murmurs, walking towards her, closing the distance between them. “Poor Rickon, that he isn’t…” He tips his head, reading the spine of her book. “ _A Lord’s Guide to Land Taxes,_ ” he reads, “to be so lovingly pressed against the princess’s breast.”

Her jaw drops open at his audacity. She flings the book away from her as if it were on fire, and stalks over to him, a finger in his face.  “Why are you tormenting me so,  _Your Grace_? Do not think that you can just, you can just, just say words to me, words like  _breast_ and  _First Night,_ that you can ask if I  _bathe_   _naked_  beneath the moon, that you can tell me you have a place for me in your heart… That you can- that you can kiss… _lick_ me _,”_ she whispers, trailing off, eyes drifting to the floor, voice tight and dry with emotion. She clears her throat, and glares at him again.  “I know I’ve let my feelings become too transparent but you cannot toy with me or with them. You know it’s impossible- you know we can’t- it will only  _end_ , but still, my feelings are not to be mocked. I cannot bear it!”

He stares at her with her rainstorm eyes and her full mouth, downturned like a bow, her hands clenched into fists as she looks up at him, half glaring, half pleading. He steps into her space, slowly, cautiously, his hands raised in surrender. The torment he has been feeling is still there, but to hear her speak so freely of how she feels, to hear her speak of  _them_ , stokes the fire in his heart, and it is too sweet a thing to back away from, anymore. He would curl himself up in those words.

“Shireen, believe me, what I said in the godswood is true,” he says gently, reaching for those hands, fisted the way a cornered, frightened cat shows her claws. She opens them in his, the anger and tension fleeing her, and exhales so forcefully he thinks she has been holding her breath. “I do not toy with people and I do not play games. I speak the truth of what my heart tells me, and my heart is full of you. Let me- let us-” He takes a deep breath, gives her a sad, pained smile. “For as long as we have, let’s not push each other away anymore,  _please,_ ” he begs.

Her lip is caught between her teeth, nipped and chewed upon, and he swallows hard as he watches. “Rickon… Honestly, you feel this way?” she whispers, and he looks back to her eyes. Her hands are shaking in his like leaves on a tree.

“Truly, I do.” he answers her, bringing her hands to his shoulders, where he leaves them, where she flexes her fingers into him. He lifts his fingers to touch her hair for the first time, and they slide in to the third knuckle before he pulls them down through the length of it. He cannot suppress the sigh that comes out of him when he discovers that it’s as soft as it looks, weighted in his hands like heavy, priceless silk.

“I have kissed you as a wolf, Shireen. Let me kiss you as a man,” he says, making her whimper. “Please.”

“No one has ever kissed me, before,” she whispers, nervous fingers worrying the fabric of his cloak.

“Wolves have,” he corrects her. When she breathes out a laugh with her lips parted he throws caution to the wind, bending his knees, sweeping down and pressing his mouth to hers. He lingers there in the chasteness of it, waiting for her reaction. He prays that she likes it, the idea of kissing him, but also knows there is a chance that she pushes him back, recoils in distaste.

She stays.

He feels the greyscale on the edge of his mouth and it thrills him, because it means it’s  _her_  here; it means his fears were in vain though his hopes were not. She sighs, and he takes advantage of her open mouth to seek her tongue with his, making her gasp before returning the gesture with vigor, and a prickling heat sweeps down his spine as he groans. “Rickon,” she says, her voice a haunting in his ears, and he wonders how much longer he has left to hear it.

She is tentative and hungry, unsure and brazen, a dizzying mix of seductress and seduced. His hands close into fists at her back, pulling into them the fabric of her gown, and her arms slide round his neck. He sinks to his knees on the thick rug and now she is the taller of the two, and she folds herself over him, her hair blocking the light from his face. He sweeps it back with eager fingers, holds her to him with a hand at the base of her skull, thinking he will get drunk off of her. But when he rocks back onto his heels and she straddles him, sits down upon his thighs, he thinks he will lose his mind.

“Gods,” he ekes out, his voice nearly a wheeze he is so debilitated by her.  He breaks the kiss, and she cries out  _No_  with a whimper curling in the back of her throat, drawing him back to her mouth, her fingers curling into his hair, and he  _will_  go mad with her now that he has her. He pulls away, chest heaving, and stares up at the ceiling, trying to master himself. He does not want to take this farther than she is prepared for. He knows highborn ladies must have wills stronger than iron to combat such actions, and she is very nearly the highest there can be.

“Shireen,” he says, righting his head to look at her, and her eyes are bright and fevered, her cheeks flushed, her devastating mouth parted, lips swollen, tongue pink. He hums, his erection pressing up against the intoxicating weight of her.  _You are king in the north,_ he scolds himself.  _You must be an honorable man. You are a Stark._ “Shireen, you cannot do this to me, we cannot… You are a maid,” he says weakly, pressing his forehead to hers, trying to calm down.

“Not for long,” she whispers, and he groans like a mummer dying on stage, flopping onto his back, pulling her on top of him, a wild tangle of arms and legs. They laugh in the warm space between them, and he kisses her until his lips burn, until the fire is just embers and the sky is dark beyond the narrow windows high in the tower. He kisses her and he holds her as close as he dares, to keep the heat in her southern blood for as long as he has her.

 

They have less time than they’d like. There is word that the kingsroad is passable, at last, three months after she arrives. Three months, with her, and only a handful of days of kissing her, of wrapping himself up in her and losing himself entirely, before she is to leave, to take advantage of the break in weather.

When the raven arrives and they are both informed, they are breaking their fasts merrily, dipping towards each other to whisper and laugh, dangerously close for mere friends or acquaintances. Rickon opens the scroll and reads it, first to himself, then out loud, his lips feeling numb. The laughter dies in their throats, and they stare at each other as if receiving news that a dear friend has died.

 _Something has died,_  Rickon thinks as she cries in his arms later, tucked away in the library, he in a chair and she curled up on his lap, the place where they meet now, several times a day to feed their addictions to each other.  _It is my hope._

 

 

It is three weeks since his conversation with Gendry in the smithy, and Sandor finds that marriage is on his mind.

Once, while naked and spent in a tavern bed, he asked her if that was something she wanted. She hummed, sat up to look at him, and said “I was nearly queen to a monster, and then they married me to the imp, made me a Lannister in name though thankfully never a Lannister in the marriage bed. I am happy to be here, with you, in a wanton lovers’ bed where there are no rules, only us.”

He has never again asked, because they fell into each other on their journey north, long before they came to Winterfell, and were long established as lovers by then. He has never again asked because she has not brought it up since, never fusses, never questions, never seems to care. He has never again asked, because once he called her little bird as an insult and reminder of her caged conditions, and though he still calls her little bird, out of love, at last she is free, and he does not want to threaten her with another type of cage.

But now it is a thought he cannot quite shake, the pleasing idea of sweeping his cloak of three dogs off his shoulders and on to hers, of calling her  _wife_ , of her belly swelling with children of theirs. The sound of  _marriage bed_  has a certain ring to it, a warm, soothing appeal, and he finds himself longing to make her his, to make himself hers in more than just a lovers’ bed.

She is before the fire, naked in the great copper tub she stores in the corner of her room ( _their_  room- he has not slept in his own chambers since the day he moved his few belongings into it), and it is filled nearly to the lip with water. Her eyes, previously closed, open to regard him, and there is a lazy, drowsy smile on her mouth. Most every time he looks at her, Sansa takes his breath away and fills his head with the rowdy thoughts of a much younger man, but this vision is almost too much to bear, and he must steel himself, must fight to keep what he has in mind,  _in_  his mind.

“Sandor,” she says, voice husky from relaxation, and lifts her hand from the water, beckoning him like some red haired sea nymph. He nods and goes the side of her bed he has claimed as his own, and she closes her eyes, waiting for him. Removing his boiled leather and vambraces, he returns to her in his breeches and tunic, squatting down by the tub, and dips his hand into the warm water, circling with a finger the dainty, fine boned cap of her knee.

Her blue eyes are on him now, and he hums in pleasure at this close up view of her body. The tops of her breasts are milk white and partially covered by the seaweed stretch of her hair that drifts and floats on the water’s surface. Not for the first time, and certainly not for the last, he questions how this creature has come to love him, how the gods, once so meager with their favor, have deemed to give him the gift of her.

“Little bird,” he says, and his voice is so  _gruff_ , he thinks, in comparison to this soft, sweet, kind hearted and tender fleshed woman he is feasting his eyes upon. She has grown from a frightened, abused girl who was terrorized by monsters to a self-assured, sharp minded woman who advises kings, almost entirely before his eyes. It never fails to impress him; sometimes it intimidates him, and he thinks she knows it.

“Would you join me? Would you like a bath of your own, after I am out?” She offers, and he grins, sliding his hand down her leg, towards the sweetness between her thighs. He has her attention now.

“Only if I can bathe in the waters that cleaned your skin,” he says and she smiles. “But first I would ask- Dammit, woman, you drive me mad,” he says, another oath under his breath as he squeezes her thigh before removing his hand from the bath, shaking away the droplets of water. “Come, Sansa, come out of this damnable bath and speak with me.”

She gives him a questioning, curious look, but her smile remains and she extends her hand again, which he takes after he stands. She rises, water streaming down, steam rising up, nipples peaking from the assault of cool air on her skin, and when he tears his eyes from her body, looking up to her, she is blushing, eyes downcast. Even after all their years together, as much of a vixen as she can be, there will always be a shade of the little bird. “Come on, you,” he gruffs to her, grabbing the sheet she has at the ready on the bed, shaking it open and wrapping it around her like a cloak. He has a vision of them before the heart tree, and it sets his heart to racing.

“Sit with me, here,” he says, leading her to the two chairs by the window-side table, and they sit in the glow of white from the winter sky that lights the little area.

“What is it? Are you all right? You never just want to talk after I bathe,” and  _oh-ho,_   _I’ve caught the little bird at her game of seduction._ Briefly he thinks back of all the times he’s walked in on her bathing, and he chuckles, realizing now that it was less a thing of losing track of the time, and more of a carefully schemed setup.

“I have been thinking,” he says, deciding to let her keep her little charade, not wanting to spoil it. She nods, bringing up the lower hem of the sheet to pat at her hair. “I would ask you to marry me, Sansa. Be my wife, if you’ll have me.”

Sansa freezes in her action, eyes widening and jaw dropping as she forgets herself in that moment of surprise. Sandor’s heart is in his throat, and he is terrified now that she will gently tell him no, in her sweet Sansa way, that she prefers him as a lover, and that the idea of him as her lord husband is unappealing. Fleetingly he looks back on their relationship with the critical, unkind eye of the harsh man he once was, is about to mistrust all of it, when she inhales sharply. He snaps his attention back to the moment, and realizes she has tears in her eyes.

“Yes! Oh,  _yes_ , Sandor, yes, I would love to,” And there is his little bird again, squealing as she leaps up and drops herself in his arms, still damp with that sheet clinging to her skin. Her arms are thrown around his neck and she is kissing him all over and all at once. He laughs, a rare thing for him, and kisses her back, and then the sheet is just a wet heap in his lap, and they are altogether busy with other things than talk of marriage.

 

 

There is to be a wedding at Winterfell. Sandor and Sansa have asked for it to be extremely private; no word will be sent out, no massive feast shall be held, because they will suffer no pomp and circumstance just to get what they want, which is simply each other. They plan it in mere days, so that Shireen may be witness to it, so that they may celebrate her visit as well as their marriage, and it is a painful, bittersweet thing to her, to be so included in their family, the night before she must leave them.

The castle prepares for the wedding in the godswood (“I was pawned off in a sept to a Lannister,” Sansa said. “My father was beheaded on the steps of a sept. Those gods are no gods of mine. I will be married by a heart tree, I will be blessed by the old gods, and the seven can go fuck themselves,” she said. Everyone gasped, even Rickon, but her soon-to-be husband Sandor only grinned). Though there will be no great feast for neighboring Houses and those who swear fealty to House Stark, there will still be a celebration for the household, and so the entire place is in a frenzy and a bustle, a whirlwind of activity.

The buildup to the ceremony is a cacophony, but the wedding itself is a sliver of serenity and calm. Shireen watches Sandor standing there, facing Sansa, stoic and straight-backed, with a look of utter disbelief on his face, and she thinks she can understand. She probably looks as he does whenever Rickon pushes her up against the stone wall in the hallway outside of her chambers, when he steals upon her in the glass gardens, when they kiss each other for hours in the library, on the floor in front of the fire as they had when they come at each other for the first time. She bites her lip, wills herself not to selfishly cry for her loss when the day is for Sansa and Sandor.

Sansa is beautiful, a brushstroke of color against the white snow; she is like a heart tree in her own right, wearing the white and gray cloak of her House, her hair the vivid red of weirwood leaves. There is unmistaken and unshielded joy in her eyes when her brother steps forward and removes her cloak, Sandor unclasping his and replacing gray and white with yellow and black. Rickon drapes the Stark cloak over his arm and lifts an intense gaze to Shireen, who shivers, wishing he could bring to her, drape it over her shoulders, and claim her as his bride.

It is a long night of drinking and eating and dancing, and while most everyone is full of joy and high in spirits, she and Rickon simply go through the motions. Sandor never dances, only watches as his lady wife dances with household staff and her only surviving brother, who dances well, Shireen realizes, once she herself takes a turn with him. They attempt to make merry, attempt to smile and laugh, but whenever he holds her close, he is full of pleading,  _stay with me, please_ , full of swearing,  _by the gods, I’ll steal you,_ and when the dance ends, and he bows to her, she sees that he has meant those words, that he would steal her, that he would have her here forever.

He makes his excuses soon after, and she sees the grief in him, the anger over something being decided  _for_  him, once again. She understands the feeling, and stares at her hands in her lap, sitting there at the table on the dais, a few minutes longer until she can bear it no longer. She excuses herself and walks alone to her chambers, gazing sadly at the short row of small trunks outside her door; her maid and her men have prepared themselves, and her, for the journey home the morning.  _It is only a matter of hours,_  she thinks, and without warning, tears are sliding down her face. She braces her fingers against her open mouth, a weak attempt to block the sob that echoes in the stone hallway.

And then she’s running past those horrible trunks, those reminders that she has less than night left here in Winterfell, less than a night with him, and she knows beyond any doubt how she wants to spend it. She has never been to his chambers but she knows the way, and she takes the stairs two at a time, her skirts thrown over her arm as Arya did to wade through the snow. The scalloped edges of her smallclothes are just visible, but she cares not a whit for how shocking it might look, though when she finally reaches his door, she smoothes down her skirts before knocking and calling his name.

“Shireen?” He barely sounds like himself, even with the heavy door between them. Rickon pulls it open, and he looks like a tortured man; his bare chest is heaving, and his red-rimmed eyes are wet. Her heart breaks and she whispers his name. He makes a guttural, animalistic sound and steps forward, grasps her hands in his and tugs her roughly to him, arms around her shoulders as he hugs her tightly. Her hands reach up and she pulls him down to her, desperate to kiss him, to eat him alive. He bends, bowing over her, kisses her hungrily, desperately, his hands clutching at her back, fingertips digging in as if he would not let her go for all the world. He crushes the breath from her but she doesn’t care, only clutches for him more, an arm around his neck, a hand running down the smooth skin of his back, and his skin is hot, even in the chill of his fireless room.

“Stay with me, tonight. Stay with me, Shireen. Don’t leave me, yet, please _._ ”

“You have me. You have me,” she says. “Steal me, tonight. Steal everything,” she says, over and over again as he grunts, tugging on the stays of her dress that stitch up the front from navel to between her breasts. Each tug rocks her body forward towards him and makes her think of what’s to come, makes her close her eyes and pray for an endless night. He pulls the ribbon out completely of each eyelet, dragging it through his fingers before dropping it and pulling it through the next. As his progress gets lower, so does he, until he sinks onto his knees before her, pressing his forehead briefly to her belly, fingers kneading her lower back.

A moan slips free from her mouth and she throws her head back, carding her fingers through his hair, until chilly air creeps between her dress and her skin. She looks down and finds him staring up at her, his hands gripping her waist as he sits back on his heels. She kicks off her slippers and slides her arms free from her sleeves, slowly, one at a time, and then the loosened garment is resting only on her hips. He yanks on the dress then, and off it goes, sliding with a whisper of fabric to the floor. She makes a move to cover her breasts with her arms, but he shakes his head, staring at her body, reaching up to gently push her arms down.

“Don’t you dare hide from me,” he whispers as he gets back to his knees, pulling her close with hands on her hips, kissing her between her breasts, down to the waist of her smallclothes. “You’re certain?” he says quietly, his breath a ghost along her skin, and he looks not to her but at what he knows is beneath her last garment.

“Gods, yes,” she pants, and he wrenches down her small clothes, a low reverberating groan escaping him before he plants a kiss just below the thatch of hair between her legs, and she inhales so sharply it dries out her throat. She has never before thought of a man doing such a thing, and is dazed from the idea as much as she is from the feelings it invokes. He stands, slowly, kissing up her body, and when he is at his full height their fingers tangle at the ties of his pants. Rickon hums with a small smile and leaves her to it, kissing her mouth and her throat, hands on her breasts. She unlaces him and he steps out of them once they fall to the floor, both of them naked now, and she boldly lets her eyes feast on him, his strong, lithe body, his hardened cock, those mystifying designs on his body, the flex of his arms when he lifts her up.

It is reflex, instinct, that tells her to wrap her naked legs around his torso, since she has never before done such a thing. It makes him moan, say her name, and his hands are beneath her, kneading the flesh of her thighs as she kisses him, licking against his tongue, and he bites her lower lip, walking them towards his bed. He places a knee on the mattress and she sags slightly in his arms, and she can  _feel_  him, how hard he is, and it is so achingly close, poised at the ready.

But he releases her so she falls onto his bed, and crawls in after her, on top of her, a prowling hunter on his hands and knees, and she shimmies back into the mound of pillows at the headboard. His eyes are all over her as he stretches his long body out beside her, on his side, and he stares unabashedly at her breasts, the place between her legs, and his hands are quick to follow where his eyes have led. She is a gasping, writhing mess for him, fingers in his hair as he nips and licks and sucks at her breasts, as he dips his fingers into her, watches her face as she bucks her hips, as he drives her absolutely mad.

“ _Please,_  Rickon,  _please,_ ” she moans, but he silences her pleas with his mouth against hers as his fingers still work her over, so she wraps her arms around his chest and pulls at him, draws him up above her. He goes willingly, withdrawing his hand, pushing her legs apart with his knees as he slides himself up and over her. She is nervous and scared and thrilled and so  _ready_ , with him kissing her and teasing her, so she repeats her earlier move of wrapping her legs around him, and he hisses with desire, shuddering at the tight way this move brings them together.

“You’re killing me,” he whispers, pausing at the brink, the edge to which, once tumbled from, they can never return.

 His eyes darken when she says “So kill me back.” He sighs in beautiful agony and nods, once, kissing her again as he adjusts himself and pushes into her. There is the briefest moment of displeasure, discomfort, but then it ebbs, and she cannot get past the fact that she is  _full_  with him, that he is  _inside_  her. She feels deliciously consumed by him. His tongue is in her mouth, his hands are in her hair, his hips are driving against the flesh of her thighs that are wrapped around him.  She hears her name from his lips like prayers, like worship, and it makes tears well in her eyes. Waves of sensation envelope her, roil and radiate from the place where they are joined, and she fleetingly thinks  _Yes, this is everything, there is nothing on earth sweeter than this feeling._

He moves slowly and surely, eyes hot as he gazes at her mere inches away. She cups his face in her hands, and hopes she will never forget this moment, the way he looks at her with love in his eyes, eyes that shed tears for her only minutes before. Her emotions mate with the physical, the blended result being a spike in sensation that overwhelms her. When she gasps and calls out his name, his eyes roll back in his head before he kisses her, catching her sighs and his name with his mouth. Each stroke intensifies the hot sort of glow that fills her, each time he sinks into her it makes her ache for more. She cannot get enough of him, and it drives her mad.

Rickon is still inside her when he suddenly rolls to his back, arms around her, pulling her on top of him. She is straddling him, breasts flush with his chest, and he rocks her upwards now with the motions of his hips, and though she isn’t quite sure what to do, she tries anyways, and when she moves her body to mirror his, he lets out a shaky sigh, breathes her name, his head thrown back to the pillows. He bids her to sit up and she does, giving him free rein to touch her body in its entirety, to stare at her in dazed wonder, an expression she is sure she mirrors. She braces herself with hands against his chest, rocking as best she knows how, and his hands move to her hips, guiding her along the length of him.

His hips move erratically and he is grunting now with each thrust. She falls forward and he grabs at her hips, humming, a desperate, rough sound, almost a plea.  And when she says “Stay inside me, don’t leave me,” and bites down on his shoulder, he grits out a strained  _“fuck”_ and shudders, spilling his seed inside her.

The next several moments are full of hot, heavy breaths, as she lies on top of him like a collapsed doll. His arms come around her and hold her to him, and he presses spent kisses to her cheek, her mouth, her temple, where her hair sticks with sweat to her skin.

“Are you all right? I didn’t hurt you, did I?” he murmurs, voice hoarse from exertion, but she shakes her head no.

“No, no, you didn’t, it was wonderful,” she says, and gusts a laugh in the sweaty, warm space between her mouth and his skin. “Horseback riding seems to have underappreciated side effects.” It takes him a moment, but he laughs too, then, a relaxed, unfocused thing. Soon, he slips out of her, and she is full of sorrow for the loss of him, for feeling so empty without him inside her. She moves off of him, and stretches out at his side; he unfolds his arm, inviting her in, and she burrows close, her head on his shoulder.

He kisses the crown of her head, still holding on to her, and she knows he is as fearful as she is to let go, to take even one step towards their looming separation. So she stays, locked tight against him, her hand on the smoothness of his chest, his heart still beating hard beneath her palm.

The heat of her body dies down, making her shiver, and he is ever doting, getting up naked to light a fire, to bring a pitcher of wine to them, to drape another fur over the mess of sheets and blankets, before slipping back into bed with her, ever warm, he with his northern blood. They lie together until the firelight fades and darkness seeps in, making them both drowsy. She traces a spiral of blue ink on his chest, and he chuckles in the faint flicker of light from the hearth.

“Skagos,” he says simply, chuckling when she  _Oohs_ and lifts her eyebrows. She smiles to think of it, to imagine him immersing himself in that wilderness, though the sadness is spreading back in from the periphery. She hugs him to her, drapes a leg over his, and he reaches behind her knee, pulling it up his body, drawing her tighter to him.  _I have him now, at least for this night, my last one here,_  is what she tells herself over and over, to keep from crying, and in this way she drifts off to sleep.

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Picset](http://jillypups.tumblr.com/post/115427678503/winters-wolf-king-chapter-5)

He finds sleep to be a near impossibility, but is happy enough to hold her close, to gently kiss her forehead, to watch her sleep. He drifts in and out, but mostly it is a night full of buzzing wonderment for him, of gut wrenching sorrow over the cruel way fate toys with him, with her, with them. Scenarios whip through his thoughts, a standoff between Stannis and him, ending in either his or the other king’s death, in Shireen’s devastation; fleeing to Skagos with her, or beyond The Wall, leaving Winterfell and the north to the only family he has left, who are terrified he will do such a thing. They all circle back to someone’s misery, leaving him to drown in his own.

 He skates his hands along her body, the swell of her hip that reminds him of waves in the sea, the pale line of her arm that he can still just make out in the dying firelight. He is overwarm, from the fire and the furs, but it is an easy sacrifice, one he’d be happy to make every night, if that were a possibility.

 When she turns in his arms, back flush to his chest, he kisses her shoulder, once, twice, three times, aiming them a little higher each time until his mouth is behind her ear. She murmurs in her sleep and stirs slightly, and the movement against his body makes him half hard again.  He is greedy, he is selfish to wake her, but he cannot help himself, not with this treasure in his arms, not when he had obtained his own pleasure so easily before. He would give that back to her, if he could, so he croons her name, drawing it out in a coaxing song.

 She rocks back against him and he presses his hips forward, making her moan in a voice thick with sleep. He wraps an arm around her, hand dipping low, rubs at her with his fingers, and _that_ makes her entire body jerk. Now she is very much alert in his arms, her voice a mewling whine as she fists the sheets and gasps, forgets to breathe until the inhale is a sharp thing in the back of her throat. Rickon gently pushes into her from behind, fingers still working between her legs, and she’s suddenly as taut as a bowstring. She reaches behind her to grab his hip, and she rocks back against him, making him grin as he kisses the back of her neck, his nose buried in the sweet smell of her hair as he moves inside her. He will bring her the joy he has already had; he will feel it when she comes, he will do this for her.

 She cries out his name, repeatedly, when she finally does, her hips moving smoothly as she has finally found her rhythm and fucks him as soundly as he fucks her. His fingers maintain their administrations for a few more moments before he moves his hand up to grab her breast, and she turns her head, cranes her neck to kiss him as he thrusts hard inside her four, five times more before grunting and coming inside her, “I love you,” falling out of his mouth over and over again, and his eyes sting with unshed tears. He refuses to let her go, and so they remain like that, curled around each other like two seashells. Sleep claims him, at last, though his dreams are dark and lonely.

 

“I’ll go,” he says, sometime before sunrise, and she rouses, murmurs something, twitches in her sleep, making him smile wistfully. “I’ll go with you. Let me go with you, Shireen,” and he brushes her hair from her neck, kissing it.

 “What?” They are whispering in the darkness of his room, the warmth of his bed, still clinging to each other like burs, legs entwined; his arm beneath her head is numb, but he doesn’t care. So long as it’s numb, that means she’s still here with him. She shifts slightly, trying to wrap her mind around his words.

 “To King’s Landing. I’ll go with you. I can’t let you leave.”

 “Oh, Rickon,” she says, turning to face him, her breath hitching. “I could never let you. You’ve never even gone to the neck; you’d be miserable. I love you for it, for saying that, for being willing to sacrifice that, but I could never do that to you. It would  _ruin_  you. You’d suffer.”

 “I will suffer all my days after you leave,” he mutters.

 "But at least it won’t be because I made you do something you don’t want to do.”

 “I don’t _want_ you to  _leave,_ ” he says fiercely, rolling onto his back, bringing her with him so her head rests above his heart. Her hair drapes over him, soft as cornsilk, and he sighs, his throat tight.

 “I don’t want to, either. I want to stay.”

 “So stay,” he says, hopeless, destitute, knowing she can’t. His eyes are wet and he reaches up in the darkness, swiping them with thumb and forefinger before tears leak down his temples to the pillow. Shireen’s ribs expand as she inhales a sigh, and she sobs out the exhale, crying into his skin as he runs his hand through her hair, over and over, and they neither of them speak anymore, simply hold each other in the dark and wait for the cruel and inevitable dawn.

 

 

He escorts her from his rooms to her own in the morning, and they don’t bother hiding anything. Her arm is linked with his and her head is against his shoulder, and even as they descend the stairs, he keeps stroking her hair with his free hand, kissing the crown of her head, murmuring how he loves her. His face is grim, expression drawn whenever she looks up at him, as if he were walking to his execution, and indeed she feels the same way; there is certainly nothing ahead to look forward to. They have not slept since their last conversation before sunrise, and they wear their fatigue as openly as their grief.

Isa is there, in her chambers, ready to dress her for the journey, but Rickon bluntly tells her  _he_  will help Shireen dress, and that she is not needed. And he does just as he says, though clumsily enough. For all his skill as a hunter and a fighter, dressing a lady is not a strong suit. It makes her laugh through her tears when he tugs confusedly on her bodice, as it laces in the back, unlike last night’s gown, when he tangles her legs in the skirts, and once more she finds the king in the north on his knees for her as he tucks her in, laces her up.  He presses a kiss along her spine before each cinch of the ribbon, and when he’s finally done, having wrapped her up when last night he set her free, she drops her face into the palms of her hands and sobs. Isa knocks on the door, worriedly, but they both shout, in unison, “Everything’s  _fine,_ ” and then they laugh, and then her tears fall harder.

 He wraps his arms around her from behind and sits down on the edge of her bed, pulling her into his lap. She curls her legs up like a child and winds her arms around his neck, tucking her head beneath his chin, and he rubs her back in soothing circles, sweeps her hair from over her back to over her shoulder and back again, inhaling deeply. They stay there and have no further interruption until, perhaps an hour later, Isa knocks once before opening the door. She looks stricken by the sight she sees, biting her lip and wringing her hands, and in a mumbling voice tells Shireen and Rickon that their party is ready, saddled and packed, and “It is time, my lady.”

 Shireen lifts her head and gives a guttering sigh before looking up into his eyes. They’re bloodshot and red rimmed, but full of love for her. She doesn’t know if it makes it better or worse. He uses the back of a bent finger to brush away the tears from her cheeks, biting his lip in concentration, careful of the tender skin below her eyes, gentle against the greyscale. He leans in and kisses her roughly, needful, all desperation and despair as he holds the back of her head with a hand, the other wrapped around her waist. She flings her arms around his shoulders and grips him as tightly as she can.

 “Shireen, Rickon, I-  _oh_ ,” she hears Sansa say, and then there is a murmur of conversation between Sansa and Isa, and she hears the sympathetic clucking of tongues, and “maybe a few minutes more,” but then she loses the thread of their conversation and sinks back into him, into his kiss.  _This is our farewell kiss,_  she realizes, and she opens her mouth, touching his tongue with hers, and then it is Rickon who cries out, voice cracking; he pulls away to bow his head and she runs her fingers down the side of his face.

 They stand soon after, and his grief is masked with a look of anger, the only way he knows how to cope, she thinks, and she understands. Already she’s putting on a face of aloofness, disappearing inside herself where she holds dear all the time they’ve spent together. Arya comes to see her off, and the small group of them head down the stairs, across the keep and through the great hall into the yard. He has asked five of his men to join her party to White Harbor, and the yard is a hive of activity. She pulls on her gloves and draws her hood up once they are outside. It is snowing, of course it is, and she feels another aching sadness over having to bid this winter land goodbye. It’s become dear to her, as a deeply intrinsic part of Rickon and simply for its wild, unapologetic beauty and mystery.

 Sansa comes forward in a rush, grasping her brother’s sleeve, pulling him in for a hurried, whispered word, and Rickon nods sharply, bids Shireen wait a moment. She stands there in confusion, holding back her tears, watching Sansa and Rickon walk quickly back to the great hall, disappearing inside. She looks back to Arya, mystified.

 Arya shrugs, and her eyes are sad as she approaches Shireen, and they embrace. “I’ll miss you,” she says. “I would say I shall visit sometime, but Starks don’t belong down there,” she says, still somewhat bitter after all this time. “They never have and never will.” Shireen laughs sadly, because it’s too true, it’s why she refused Rickon, it’s why she’d rather say goodbye to him here in his northern lands, than see him slowly wither and shrivel into nothingness down south.

 "I know you don’t,” she replies with a watery smile. “Believe me, I do. And I’ll miss you too. And you, Gendry, Sandor, Harwin, everyone.” She smiles to each of them in kind and they bow to her, though Sandor’s is more of a nod than a bow, and that makes her smile.

 “And will you be riding the kingsroad all the way down, my lady?” Harwin asks.

 “We ride along the river to White Harbor and shall sail the rest of the way down, provided the sea is calm enough. We’ll stick close to land, I’m sure,” she says, and the idea of floating away from here makes her close her eyes, it’s that much to bear.

 When she opens them, the door to the great hall flings open with a bang, and Rickon is striding out towards her through the lazy snowfall, all purpose, all king, Sansa in his wake. He is dressed differently, though she cannot tell exactly how, only that he  _looks_  different, but when he stops before her, she sees the gray and white cloak clasped about his shoulders. She breathes out a wavering laugh, as mingled as it is with unshed tears, pressing a gloved hand across her mouth. “Rickon,” she murmurs.

 He looks at her with somber eyes that are dark with sorrow, steady with intent. Without fanfare, for that is not his way, he unclasps the direwolf pin at his throat and takes the marriage cloak from his shoulders to drape it around hers. “Because you are mine, no matter where in hells you are,” he says quickly, quietly, as he refastens the silver direwolf, securing the cloak in place. “And if your father tries marrying you off, you send a raven to me, and I will come and kill the man who tries to replace the Stark cloak with his own.” And with that, he stoops and lifts her in his arms, kissing her in front of every Baratheon bannerman, every member of his household who happens to be outside. A murmur, a few titters of laughter, sweep through the people there, but if Rickon hears it, he cares not, and neither does Shireen. He releases her reluctantly, and steps to the side as Sansa comes forward to give her a final hug and farewell.

 A stable hand brings forward the same step she used to dismount when she first arrived, but Rickon holds up a hand, stopping him, and the boy backs up immediately. Rickon gazes at her, tucks the few escaping strands of hair back inside her hood, and smiles sadly to her. He bows his head and drops down, bends a knee into the snow, so she may use his other for her step. She rests her hand on his shoulder to brace herself as she places her foot on his thigh, and his hand is beneath her skirts, grasping her booted ankle, a final plea, a final prayer. She moves her hand from his shoulder to the side of his face, and his bowed head lifts.

 “I love you, Rickon,” she whispers, and there is a murmur amongst her bannermen, who have largely missed the increasingly intimate interactions between their princess and this northern king, and she knows she will get an earful when she finally makes it to King’s Landing.

 “And I love you,” he murmurs back, releasing her ankle, letting her mount her horse. He stands swiftly when her feet are in the stirrups, and though the rest of the house stands still as her party makes its way to the east gate, yardsmen waving to Baratheon men and vice versa, Rickon walks beside her horse, his hand in hers atop her thigh, stopping only when they reach the gate. “Remember, you are kissed by wolves. You’re more a Stark than you realize,” he murmurs, staring up at her. She keeps her head turned towards him as they ride out, until they round the corner, and he disappears from view. There is a horrendous, bone chilling howl that rises up from somewhere within the castle walls, and she knows it is Shaggydog, and she knows he is letting out all the pain his master feels. At that precise moment, Shireen Baratheon knows what a broken heart feels like.

  

 

“Has he even slept?” Arya asks, and Sansa sighs, shrugging. They are both gazing out of the window on the covered bridge, where once they stood anticipating a wedding, where now they stand witnessing the downward spiral of their little brother. He is drunk as a fool, with a training sword in one hand and a near empty wineskin in the other, standing in the yard the day after Shireen’s departure. He strikes at the straw dummy with erratic, flailing movements, and when he finally drops the skin, spilling red onto the snow, he grabs the sword’s hilt with both hands and gives a strangled sort of battle cry, one they can hear all the way up through the glass, before staggering towards the dummy and impaling it. He sags over the sword and then stumbles to the side, falling on his arse in the muddy snow. Rickon tries to stand but falls back again, and so he stays down, knees splayed in the air, arms resting on them, head bowed.

 “He is going to feel like shit tomorrow,” Arya says, and Sansa nods.

 “Yes, for more reasons than just the wine,” Sansa says.

 Harwin and Sandor approach him, and he puts up a halfhearted fight for only a moment before the two men hoist him up, Sandor pulling one of Rickon’s arms over his shoulders, Harwin doing the same on Rickon’s other side. They half drag him, half walk him back to the keep, towards where Sansa and Arya stand, and they can see the misery on their little brother’s face.

 “There really is no way?” Arya asks. Sansa shakes her head, smiling sadly down to her baby sister.  _Not a baby,_ she thinks,  _for here is a woman grown with a smith for a lover and countless battles and bloodshed in her past._

“No. Perhaps she could stay, they could marry, and she could play like a girl with dolls at being queen in the north, but Stannis will eventually die. If Shireen does not take the throne then, the entire realm will be at war again. Rickon could go south with her, but that would leave the north unprotected, plus I know he’d never leave us here.”

 “I could rule,” Arya says, though there is no joy in the statement.

 “Rickon would never make you, Arya, you know that. So the north would fall to war, just as the south would were she to abandon her throne.”

 “They’re both so strong, for being so young,” Arya murmurs. Just before they haul Rickon indoors, he lurches forward, vomiting vivid red onto the snow. “Well,” she says wryly, as Sansa wrinkles her nose and sighs. “Maybe not  _that_  strong.”

 

  

Isa has served her lady for over three years, since Queen Selyse sent for her in White Harbor, and she has never seen her mistress so distraught. She holds her head up, aye, and she isn’t crying anymore, not like in her chambers when the king was holding her, but there’s no life in her anymore. All the way from The Wall, their bums aching from the saddle, their fingers numb through their gloves from the cold, the princess had laughed and made keen observations, pointing out things of interest, all to keep Isa from despairing over the never ending ride. On _this_ ride, though, she has not spoken since she told the king she loved him, and keeps her head down, though every now and then she pulls that Stark cloak tighter around her, fingering the soft white fur trim, brushing it against her good cheek.

 Her mistress’s silence and sorrow has made the discomfort of riding all the more noticeable, and she grits her teeth to bear it in the same regal silence as her lady does. Her bannermen are silent too, wary of their usually bright and clever princess now that she is mired in silence and gloom. Before there had been bawdy jokes for Shireen and Isa to gasp and roll their eyes at, and now there is nothing, only the plodding of hooves, the whip of wind, the rolling of clouds overhead.

 Shireen’s head droops more and more, and it is still hours before sundown when Isa demands they stop and make camp, lest they wish to see the daughter of their king fall from her saddle to the iced over mud beneath their horses’ hooves. While the men sit round the fire, passing around ale and wine and roasted hare, Isa lies next to her lady beneath a mound of furs, and lies awake, listening to her cry herself to sleep. Isa has never been in love, though she’s been close, but she wonders if it’s worth it, as witness to all this pain. She half feels her own heart is breaking. When the princess finally spends herself and succumbs to sleep, Isa lies awake a great deal longer, wondering at the price of love, how it can fill the heart one moment, and shatter it to pieces the next.

 

  

“He was drunk as a loon,” Sandor says as they all sit at table that night, Rickon’s chair conspicuously empty between Sansa and Arya, though out of respect they leave it where it stands, and simply speak louder to make up for the distance. “Ranting and raving, ‘I’ll steal her, fuck Stannis, she’s mine, fuck him to all seven hells and his bloody red god too,’ something like that. Then he threw up.” Sandor sighs and shakes his head. “Poor lovesick bastard.”

 “Is he all right now?” Gendry asks, leaning in to hear.

 “Sleeping it off, thank the gods,” Sansa answers, sighing, sipping a spoonful of the thick, hearty soup. “Though I dread how he will feel and behave tomorrow. If we thought we saw Rickon at his worst when he came back from Skagos, then we’ve likely got another thing coming to us.”

  

 

Harwin has not left his master’s side since the drunken spectacle outside, and takes his meal at the table under Rickon’s window as the king sleeps off the alcohol, sprawled diagonally in his bed. He wakes in half conscious fits of stupor, drunken, scattered mumbling, but Harwin always hears  _Shireen_ , sometimes  _I love you, please stay._  The latest nearly frightened him to death when the king sat up straight as a spear, croaking out  _I can still smell her, she’s here, where did she go?_  before collapsing back to his bed, mouth slack, head tilted to the side. Harwin shudders, sighs, and wonders how in hells he’s going to survive this. But there are no more outbursts that night, and so the king’s steward is able to get a few hours of sleep, dreaming of lovers and tears, and when he wakes, it is with a heavy heart. 

 

  

“Your Grace,” comes a voice, swimming through the wine and the bile and the sour stomach, the taste of death in his mouth and the pounding between his ears. “Your Grace, come,  _Rickon,_  wake up, man, snap out of this,” and it’s Harwin, and Rickon feels so horrible, he thinks he might kill his steward for rousing him only to feel this.

 “What the fuck is it,” he growls, wincing instantly, and he lifts a shaking hand to press it to his temple.

 “This, Your Grace,” Harwin says, and his hands are trembling as well when he holds out a loose scroll, its Baratheon seal broken. Rickon sits up like a shot, ignoring the piercing pain of his headache and slosh of his stomach.

 “What is this? When did this arrive?” He says, pulling open the paper to read its missive. He frowns, shakes his head, reads it again, twice. Realization dawns on him, and he rakes his hair from his eyes. “Merciful gods,” he breathes, and the headache is gone, swept away by a flood of adrenaline, the rising wave of relief that washes out all the misery, leaving hope in its wake.

“But this has just missed her, what, I mean, where did she go? Is she on the kingsroad?”

 “No, they ride along the river for White Harbor, to sail home, a more direct route, meaning they’ll be traveling by land for less time.” It had already been two full days since she has left, and as they were a small party, they could be traveling faster. Rickon holds his head in his hands, mind and heart racing with like purpose. He clutches the scroll in his fist and gets dressed in frantic haste; this time, he allows Harwin to help him, and the steward buttons his doublet as Rickon pulls on his gloves and fastens a cloak around his shoulders, thinking all the while of the gray and white cloak he draped Shireen with. _And now it can happen for true,_ he thinks, and grins, clapping his steward on the arm before striding from the room.

 Rickon bellows for guards, for his sisters, as he descends the stairs to their floor, walking so fast Harwin nearly has to trot beside him to keep up; he lays out his demands for a traveling party of his own, at least 10 men, and he requests Sandor and Ned Dayne to join him, with Arik the wildling and a few of his clan as well. Harwin nods and is about to run ahead when Rickon stops him. “I need a small ale and some bread, while you’re at it,” and Harwin rolls his eyes.

 “You were a fool to get so drunk.”

 “I’ve seen _you_ drunker, old man.” Sansa emerges and follows him across the bridge to the armory, where he finds his other sister, polishing Needle on a small roughhewn bench. “Arya, Sansa, I’m leaving. I’m taking 10 men, your new husband being one of them,” he aims to the eldest. “You’re both to stay here, and I don’t want you to argue with me, Arya. A Stark must always be at Winterfell, you know the words. Sansa’s as much a Clegane as a Stark now. No offense,” he says as an aside, and Sansa shrugs, shaking her head, mystified by this sudden snap in his behavior.

 “Rickon, what in the world has come over you? Where are you going? Surely not a hunt, with 10 men,” Sansa asks, hands on her hips as he straps on his sword. He makes a move to leave, but with a second thought he grabs his bow and arrows, slinging first the quiver onto his back and then the bow after.

 “I am getting me my queen,” he says, handing the scroll to his sisters, who huddle closely, side by side, as they read it. Sansa gasps and looks up at him, blue eyes wide. Arya grins, handing it back to him, and he tucks it into the pocket of his doublet, shoves open the door, stepping out into the brilliance of the snow covered yard, into the clamor and bustle.

 He whistles for Shaggydog once they are out of the east gate, and the resounding howl that replies from the wolfswood brings a happy chill up his spine, and before long he is accompanied by his familiar. “Ride hard, men. We have lost precious time, thanks to that damned raven’s timing,” and they set out, thundering down the kingsroad to the tributary of the White Knife, hoof beats muffled by snow though the easing of snowstorms means their speed is not hindered by much.

 Each time they stop to rest and water their horses, he paces like an angry cat, unable to stand still, much less sit and eat or drink, though Sandor eventually clamps an iron vise on his shoulder so roughly that it nearly knocks Rickon to his arse. “Sit the fuck down,” Sandor says to him, shoving a skin of wine and a chunk of cheese in his hands. “You’re making me dizzy and it’s pissing me off.” He is the only one who can get through to him, and so each time they stop, it is Sandor who snaps him out of himself.

 That night, side by side around a fire, Sandor assures him they’ve likely come farther than Shireen’s party had the first day. “I don’t care how small the party, when there’s women and their trunks involved, it’ll be slower. There will be more breaks, there will be more time taken up setting up and breaking camp. We’ll get her before she boards any bloody ship.”

 Rickon must content himself with this, and as Shaggydog howls and whines under the moon that washes them all in her light, now that the clouds have seemed to part for a spell, he wraps himself up in it, in Sandor’s assurance, as much as he wraps himself in his blankets.

  

 

They are finishing their second day of tedious, slow travel. She feels horrible for the weakness she displayed to her father’s men on the first day, her sleepless night with Rickon making it impossible for her to ride very long. Sheer exhaustion rendered sleep possible that night, despite the frigidness and the wind that bit through their tents. The second day is not as arduous, and the riverbanks are clear of other travelers, but still their pace is slower than her men would ride without them, without the weighted down pack horses. She is reluctant to leave the north, reluctant to burden her men, and so she rides, torn as ever between her heart and her duty.

 She dreams, that night, of Rickon, and it is like a collage of moments together: the steam rising off his shoulders as he leaned in asking for her hand; the feel of his tongue against her palm; when he held her above him as he made love to her; his hoarse cry into her mouth as they said goodbye; the weight of his cloak when he swept it over her shoulders. She dreams of the howling of a wolf so realistic in startles her to wake, and she lies in her raised pallet, breathing hard, discombobulated by her dreams. She can still feel his skin, still taste his mouth, and the howl still echoes in her ears. She hears another howl, high and desperate and going on forever long, and wonders if she is in some desperate sort of dream state, but then Isa sits bolt upright, gasping in fear.

 “What _was_ that, my lady? Was that one of them monstrous wolves like up in Winterfell?”

 Shireen smiles despite herself. “I don’t know, Isa. I don’t know.” _Please let it be,_ she prays, closing her eyes, ears pricked in hopes of hearing the wolf howl again. _Please._


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Picset](http://jillypups.tumblr.com/post/115433804698/winters-wolf-king-chapter-6)

“We’re not far from them,” Arik says, crouched beside a snuffed out campfire, testing the stone ring with his bare fingers. He draws his hand back sharply, and wags his fingers in the air to cool his burned skin. They are fifty yards away from the river’s bank and have found the stones thanks to the spread out manner in which they ride, five men on one bank, five on the other, while Rickon shifts between, impatient for any sign of her. “This here’s still hot to the touch, very much so.” It is just after noon on the day after they left; they have eaten up two full days of the Baratheon party’s distance, and bear down on them with a fury. His men are tired, their horses are tired, but Rickon has encouraged them, and the sight of their sullen king so animated has them as hungry for the chase as if it were true stag they hunted, and not just the banner.

“Mount up then, and let’s show them how north men ride,” Rickon says, his horse snorting beneath him, and he  _hyahs_ , whistles and whoops for Shaggydog to spring to, and they move on, thundering down alongside the still flowing river, cold, icy mud flying from their hooves, dirtying their horses’ breasts, their breeches and boots, their swords and scabbards. He is armored in boiled leather and his vambraces, over his doublet, and those are all spattered with mud as well.

An hour later, Ned Dayne calls out from the other bank, having caught sight of a small ring of stones two dozen yards off the bank, hidden by trees and scrub and brush, and Dayne is suspicious. “How many times does a party stop, even with women?” They don’t bother to pause and feel for heat; the thinnest wisp of smoke still coils up from its center, giving away how fresh a site it is. “This is another party altogether, and judging by the muddying around here, look,” he points, “too many hoof prints; too many men and too close to the Baratheons. I don’t like it.”

“The princess and her party likely trotted right by them completely unaware; the smell of wood smoke is common enough in summer, let alone winter,” Sandor says, crossing the narrow tributary to inspect the site.  “These men knew to hide themselves.”

Rickon grits his teeth and presses on, riding all the faster for their words of ill omen. But they ride for only another 20 minutes before they see the band of men, most likely wildlings even this far south of The Wall, bearing down on Shireen and her party, though they ride for their lives. There are 12 of them on horseback between his men and Shireen’s. He can see her black hair like a banner of death streaming behind her; she rides in the middle of the river and is surrounded on either bank by the thieves –  _or worse,_  he thinks. Rickon’s blood freezes in his veins and terror wells up like bile in his throat. He narrows his eyes and kicks his horse to a gallop, straight down the middle of the shallow river.

His men flank him, some on one side of the river, some on the other, swords drawn, but it is Rickon who makes the first attack, gripping his horse with his legs as he grabs an arrow and pulls the bow from across his body, nocks and aims it for the rearmost man. It gets him between the shoulders, and he falls from his horse without a sound; the now freed beast swerves away from the cold water and bounds up the bank, tossing its head. He sends another arrow down into the bastard when he rides past him, and blood blooms in the water.

He is gripped with fear when the Baratheon and Stark men are overtaken; four of the soldiers immediately separate and position themselves around Shireen and her maid, while the others wheel their horses around to meet the others head on. The leathery slide of drawn swords fills the air. It is difficult defense, so close to the river and the wildling men use it to their advantage. Of the seven Baratheon defenders, four fall immediately, and Rickon roars a blood-curdling battle cry, one that is echoed by his men and perhaps the most fearsome member of their rescue party, Shaggydog, who comes tearing out of the trees lining the east side of the river, a snarling howl against his teeth, and leaps clear over one man’s horse, bringing its screaming, terrified rider down with a vicious clamp of his jaws, the horse twisting and falling under the weight of the impact. There is a gruesome struggle and a vicious, wet, ripping sound that has nothing to do with the river, and once more it runs red. The screaming and the surprise attack of the direwolf achieve their intent, which is to distract the attackers from Shireen’s party, already down to just six men and two terrified women.

“Go! Up the bank, now!” Sandor screams to the guards surrounding Shireen and Isa, pointing in the direction he wants before raising his sword and slashing a foe from armpit to hipbone as he rides directly into the fray. Rickon and his men follow, cutting them down, attacking horses in order to fell their riders, Shaggydog tending to any unhorsed man unlucky enough to be found. Rickon takes a nasty slash from an axe to his right thigh, another knife wound below his calf, but he ignores them, pressing through the knot of fighting, putting his sword through two more men before breaking through to find Shireen.

“Rickon,” she sobs, kicking her horse towards him when he crests the small bank and she can see it is him. Her hand flies to her mouth and he must look a filthy, bloody mess to her, but they ride towards each other, bumping their knees together when finally they can embrace, fiercely, from their saddles. He inhales sharply the smell of her, closing his eyes when her loose hair brushes his forehead and nose.

“Take them and go,” says Lewllyn, one of the Stark men sent with her party, his sword drawn, his expression hungry for blood. “We’ll finish them off now we know she’s safe.”

“Get on my horse,” Rickon says, sheathing his sword, refusing to maintain any more distance between them, circling round her so she can switch mounts. Shireen does so without a word, and the feeling of her arms snaking around his middle makes him want to close his eyes in relief. “Isa, follow us, and ride without complaint.” To her credit, the maid simply nods, fearful but firm, and Rickon has to admire her pluck.

He calls Arik from the ragged remnants of the fight and bids him escort Isa to Winterfell, and tells Sandor to ride north once the killing’s done, taking any weapons, the princess’s belongings, and any unmanned horses, to which Sandor replies “No shit” before punching one of the last men clear off his steed, and there is a horrific snapping of direwolf jaws that even Rickon turns away from before calling Shaggydog to his side.

They ride to Winterfell mostly in silence, Shireen asking no questions of why they ride opposite from whence she was headed, only burying her head against his the furs on his back. The pain is excruciating now, and after a handful of hours he wordlessly takes her right hand from its grip on his waist and presses it, firmly, to his wound. She gasps, he can feel it against his back, but there is no hesitation, only the pressure of her small hand, and it takes some of the pain away, to feel her there.

Arik rides up from the rear, Isa in his wake, and still it’s a silent ride until nightfall when Sandor and the rest of his men catch up and surround them. When they are reunited they pull off the bank and ride west for the kingsroad, as there are far fewer hiding places from which to stage an ambush, and the riding is easier. His head bobs wearily, but still he commands they ride through the night in order to reach Winterfell faster. Shaving off the time it would take to secure a camp, make a camp, and sleep will bring them home before dawn, he wagers.

“Rickon, are you all right?” she mumbles against his shoulder, flexing her likely cold fingers above his wound, making him flinch in pain. “You need a maester,” she says, and he nods.

 “Yes, you’ve the right of it. As soon as we’re home, I will have one. But first I need to know you’re safe.” He holds his reins in his left hand and grips her left forearm with his right, turning his head to gaze back at her. She lifts her head and kisses him. “Your father sent a raven,” he says to her in the darkness, caring not a whit for the lack of privacy they have. He smiles through the pain. “Danaerys Targaryen descended on Stannis’s keep three weeks ago. They both of them wished to avoid war and she wished to avoid the title of Usurper, as you can well imagine. She, as a Targaryen and as your father’s cousin, will rule after your father’s reign ends. He wrote to inform you of your loss, amusingly enough. You are no longer heir. You are free.”

Shireen says nothing, but a breath rushes from her lungs, and she burrows her head against him once more. Rickon gets to hear now, for the first time, what her happy tears sound like. He switches hands, grasping the reins with his right to reach back and wrap his left around her, drawing her with the back of his forearm closer to him. “I’ll be yours, if you’ll have me, if you’ll wed me.”

“I’m in your cloak, aren’t I?” she says, lifting her chin to set it on the crest of his shoulder, and he can hear how a smile shapes her words. “Of course I’ll wed you. I feel like I already have,” and Rickon grins in the night. He moves his hand from around Shireen and for the rest of the night they ride with the fingers of their left hands entwined, her right hand pressed, without fail, to his wound.

He was wrong; it is just after dawn when they plod wearily through Wintertown and in through the south gate, and his men heave themselves off their horses as if the weight of the world rested on their shoulders. Even Shaggydog’s head hangs low before he disappears into the keep. It is too early for his sisters, but Harwin, ever faithful Harwin, is there, barking orders for hot wine, hot water and food from the kitchens, demanding fires lit. He himself pulls Isa from her horse and orders her inside, coming next to Rickon’s horse.

“What in hells happened to you all?” The steward demands.

“Wildling attack,” Rickon says bluntly.

“He needs a maester,” Shireen states, imperially, queen already, pressing her hand harder against his wound, and Rickon stifles a grunt of pain. He twists as best he can in the saddle and kisses her roughly, cupping her gray cheek as he looks at her.

“Go on, love, follow your maid. I will find you directly,” and she allows Harwin to offer the same courtesy he gave to Isa. She is led to the keep though she keeps her head turned, eyes on him, until disappearing inside, and he is reminded of when she last left him, riding away. He dismounts, swinging his injured leg over the horse’s neck, and slides down, landing neatly on his left foot, but when he tests his right with a small press of weight to the ground, his vision swims.

Harwin returns. His horse is led to the stables. Sandor is commanding the guard, but Rickon cannot quite follow. His head spins and suddenly he feels  _very_ tired. “Shireen,” he says weakly, and then he remembers that he sent her inside. “Right,” he says to no one, and takes a step towards the keep, staggering like a drunk. Harwin is there, gripping him by the shoulder, looking down at the ground in horror. Rickon looks down as well, and he is standing in a spatter, a small but growing pool of blood. He smiles faintly.  _She did a good job holding it in, but she’s gone now. Where did she go?_

“Rickon,” Harwin says. “Your Grace, is it-”

“Yes, it’s mine,” Rickon says, and he drops to the cold ground, everything going black around him, black as Shaggy’s fur, black as the river of her hair, and he reaches out to touch it, but feels only the warmth of his own blood.

 

 

Her voice breaks, cracks into a thousand cries when she sobs his name, when Rickon is carried in between two men, Harwin holding his upper body, his head lolling on his steward’s shoulder, while Lem has his legs. They carry him through the hall and up to the keep, and she follows them, Sansa and Arya in her wake, their eyes puffy and red from interrupted sleep.

“What has  _happened_?” Sansa asks.

“We were ambushed, along the river. We didn’t even make it to the fork. Had he not- had they not come when they did,” Shireen trails off, shaking her head, refusing to speak what would have befallen Isa and her.

The maester, out of breath from his hasty path from his tower, pushes through the women to the king’s bed, and the blood-soaked leg of Rickon’s breeches is cut away with a dagger, the fabric pushed to either side of his leg, revealing the wounds. The long ride home has not done him, or the wound on his thigh, any favors. It oozes blood, and Shireen can see a gleam of white, bone perhaps, but she is not sure.

“Gods in all hells,” Arya swears, and Sansa turns her back on the scene, a hand pressed to her mouth. Shireen shoves past Lem and crawls like a child onto his bed, the empty side, the side she will claim when she becomes his wife. She holds his head, gently removes the pillow from beneath it, and smoothes her skirts before gingerly lowering his head into her lap. Rickon’s steward makes a suggestion that perhaps it’s not wise, and she gives him so fierce a stare he literally takes a step back from the foot of the bed.

“You are speaking to his future queen, dear Harwin,” Sansa says softly. “I think she should stay where she sits,” and even the maester doesn’t dare argue with the arrangement. Instead Bowen just asks for wine to wash the wound, milk of the poppy, needle and thread, and Sansa and Arya dash out to acquire them all. When he is finally able to stitch shut the two horrid slashes in his flesh, Shireen remains, still as stone save for the brushing of her fingertips along his hairline, drawing the hair from his forehead and cheeks, as she searches his face for any sign of reaction. Sansa returns an hour after the maester leaves and brings her hot broth and bread, and props the rest of Rickon’s pillows behind and around her, so that she can sleep if she wants to.

Hours pass, and she never wants to sleep again, not until he wakes, not until he says her name and reaches out for her again. Her eyes drowse, no matter how hard she fights it. Her legs are asleep and numb beneath him; if she moves them even a centimeter, she is assaulted with painful prickling and needling, so she keeps them still, though that simply lulls her even more. She thinks of his scream, his wolf’s snarl, his men, all around him, roaring in unison as they cut through her attackers. She remembers his wide and wild eyes, fevered from the fight, when they came towards one another; she remembers the spatter of blood and sweat, mud and water all over his face and chest, the blood soaking his leg as he rode up the bank towards her, sword drawn, the singular moment she knew she was safe.

Even with these adrenaline-spiking thoughts, she cannot fight the onslaught of exhaustion and soon sinks back against the pillows, her hands in his hair, the ache of maybe losing him to his wounds heavy in her heart, where it had been so light, riding behind him as he offered her marriage, his heart, his home. She sleeps, and it is a dark place without dreams.

 

 

“Ah, you’re awake,” the maester murmurs from his bedside chair, nodding and rising, taking care to stretch his back before shuffling over to the large table in the solar adjoining the king’s bedroom. He returns with a pitcher and a cup, pouring water as he walks. “You’ll need some of this, I’d wager. Milk of the poppy always leaves a dried out mouth.”

Rickon groans and the maester shushes him as if he were a petulant child. The pain in his leg throbs and vexes him, but enough residual effects of the poppy keep it just at bay. He lifts a heavy hand and rubs at his eyes, and the maester tut-tuts at him, telling him to be still. “ _What_ , old man?” he hisses, but Bowen just brings a finger to his lips and nods towards Rickon’s pillow.

He cranes his neck and as he turns his head to the side, he sees the fabric of a dress where his pillow should be, the swell of a crooked knee where it should be a mound of shapeless goose down. As he moves, he feels the weight of hands in his hair, and he understands now. He tilts his head slowly and looks all the way back and is blessed with the upside down view of Shireen, asleep against a wall of pillows between her body and the headboard, held up in a vertical line with the weight of her resting form. Her mouth is relaxed, but there is a hard line of worry between her brows, even in sleep, that melts his heart away. He smiles wearily and looks back to the maester, who has a very smug sort of look waiting for him.

“How long…?”

“She has been with you the entire time, all day and half of tonight. You collapsed in the yard, Your Grace,” he explains, voice hushed, when Rickon gives him a mystified look. “You lost a lot of blood after your hard ride. Knocked yourself right out with the exertion. Brought you up here to stitch you back together like a rag doll, and she’s been your support since before the needle went in. Now drink that water like a good man,” he orders before turning to amble from the room.

Rickon manages a sip before setting it on the bedside table, turning slowly, ever so slowly so as not to wake her, onto his side, the stitched up leg resting atop his good one. He wraps an arm around her, tucking his hand behind her hips, nestles himself in the cradle of her thighs and drifts back to sleep, letting what is left of the milk of the poppy do its magic.

 

 

“Her legs’ll be stuck like that forever if we don’t get her to move,” Isa says, arms folded over her chest. She’s in a huff, not having been allowed to care for her lady, and while Sansa prides herself for possessing an impressive patience, Isa is not winning any favor from her at the moment. But she does agree that Shireen will likely be extremely stiff and sore when she wakes. It is nearly midday, the day after the wildling attack; Rickon has woken once, according to the maester, but not Shireen; she has slumbered since she fell asleep after sunset, after a sorrowful, all-day vigil.

“There is no way to move her without waking him.” Indeed, he is draped in her lap like a lover, which she supposes they are now, has managed to turn himself nearly on his stomach, his injured leg practically dangling over the edge of the mattress, and his face is burrowed, with startling familiarity, in her skirts. She purses her lips and shakes her head at how bold he can be, even in sleep.

“So wake him,” Isa sniffs.

“Wake our injured king from restful, restorative sleep?” Sansa asks, incredulous, and she crosses her arms to mirror the maid’s own stubborn stance.

“Wake him you already have,” he mutters, voice thick with the stupor of poppies and sleep. Sansa gasps and lifts a hand to her mouth, rushing to her brother. She bends over, peering into his face, and he looks 10 years older than his 19, and probably feels as weary as an old man, she’d guess.

“Are you all right?”

“I feel as I’ve been in a skirmish,” he says, eyes bleary when they open. He lifts his head, smacks his lips and grimaces. “Water.” He reaches for the cup and she meets him halfway with it; he drinks thirstily, a rivulet of water sliding down into the scruff of his chin. He attempts to sit up after handing Sansa the cup, flinches and swears, falters and nearly collapses back onto Shireen.

“Please, Your Grace, let the poor girl move her legs,” Isa begs, and Sansa has to admire her loyalty.

“It’s true, Rickon, she’s not moved a literal inch since coming to you.” She helps her brother sit up, once he’s rolled himself to his back, an arm bracing his shoulders as he carefully scoots down the bed away from Shireen. He gazes back to her, and Sansa sees concern in his eyes. Dozens of stitches in his leg after turning the maester into a practical seamstress, 18 dead men burned or buried by the river, and he’s worried for the princess’s comfort on a featherbed. It makes her think of Sandor’s unwavering love, and that makes her smile.

She helps him to crab walk backwards, dragging the injured leg so as not to open any stitches, up the mattress to lie beside Shireen, and covers his good leg with a blanket, though he snaps and growls at her, as rude as his direwolf, that he doesn’t need it. Sansa ignores him.

Isa carefully, slowly, unbends Shireen’s legs, and the poor thing is so worn out she never stirs, though the blood returning to the limbs must sting like a bed full of nettles. Isa half cradles her like a child would a doll, sliding her down off her wall of pillows so she can lie down properly. Shireen twists immediately, as if she can sense where he is, and curls in towards Rickon, finding his chest for her pillow. Her baby brother smiles, puts his arm around her, and closes his eyes.

In less than a minute, he’s asleep again, the smile never leaving. Isa throws a fur over Shireen and stokes the fire in the grate while Sansa whispers through the doorway to tell a guard to send for the maester. Before she and the maid leave, they both glance back into low-lit room, how his head already sags down towards hers, how she is huddled against him with an arm across his belly, how as exhausted as he is, his arm has not dropped from her shoulder, where it holds her to him.  She exchanges a glance with Isa, and they both smile softly to each other before gently, quietly, Sansa closes the door.

 

 

She finally wakes, half startled to find that she is in an altogether different position than when she had fallen asleep.  _When? When was that?_  Then she gasps when there is the strike of a match and the maester, stooping more than usual, tosses the lit thing onto the prepared firewood in the grate, illuminating his face and the front of his robes. Shireen tries to rise, but there is a vise around her, pulling her down. It is Rickon’s arm, strong even after his injuries, even in sleep.

“Don’t leave me,” he mumbles, a strange tune to his voice, and she realizes it’s the sound of fear. She turns her face away from maester Bowen’s fire to look at him, his eyes half open. There is no trace of his milk of the poppy, but then she remembers that that had been hours ago, maybe an entire day ago. She brushes his cheek with her fingers, and his eyes close briefly with the contact.

“I will never leave you,” she says, meaning it.

“Good. Good,” he smiles. He releases her, then, and she stands, her legs weak as a fawn’s, fetches them both water, helps him to sit up when he struggles under the weight of pain. Both of them have slept long enough, so they sit together, up against the headboard, after she calls for food to be brought to them. Rickon is ravenous, and her relief in knowing he is all right stokes her own appetite. They sip mulled wine and eat a mutton stew, thick with mushrooms and cream, side by side. When they finish, the maester comes over to look at his wounds, nods his approval, and leaves. Rickon drinks the last of his wine after swiping clean his empty bowl with a hunk of bread, and sets his dishes on the bedside table. He watches her eat as if it fascinates him, and it makes her blush. When finally she finishes and sets her own dishes aside, he takes her by the hand.

“I never asked you properly,” he says, and she says  _Ah_ , knowing now why he studies her so intently, “half conscious and on horseback, covered in blood. That’s no way to do it.”

“You stole me too, for good measure,” she murmurs, and it makes him smile.

“I did. But in Winterfell, ladies are always asked,” he says with a raised eyebrow, and she laughs, remembering his first dark humored quip to her. “And I would say the words and hear your answer, my lady. Will you be my wife, will you be my queen? Will you let me love you all my days?”

She slides closer to him, her back to the fire, faces him, and props herself above him, a hand braced against the edge of the mattress on his other side. He is bathed in firelight, and it lights up the love in his eyes, turning the green to an amber yellow as he gazes at her eagerly. Shireen smiles.

“Yes, a thousand times. No matter which way you ask, I will be your wife. I will be your queen.”

He pulls her to him, cupping her face, and she wonders when she will get used to him touching her greyscale. He brushes both cheeks with his thumbs and kisses her, whispers  _I love you_  each time the kiss breaks, and she is the buzzing of a hundred thousand bees, she is so full of love and happiness and  _peace_.

 

 

It is late on the eve of his wedding,  _their_  wedding, and yet she is nowhere to be found. Giddy excitement has his blood up, and after drinking wine with Gendry long after dinner ended, he has found that his bride has drifted off, presumably to hide herself away before they marry. After pacing his own chambers, he finally steals down the hallway and a flight of steps, quietly with so many guests here for the wedding and feast, to knock on her door. There is no answer, and he is about to knock again when it opens, and a  _very_ irritable Isa glares at him, arms akimbo, looking as if she is about to give him a talking to. He backs up with his palms facing her, the way he’d flee a wild animal, and then is off to wander the halls of Winterfell alone.

It doesn’t strike him until he’s halfway to the library, in the middle of a flurry of snowfall, wondering if she’s holed herself up in there with a book, and he detours, grinning, heads towards the north gate to step inside the godswood, a bloodhound on the scent. As always it is blessedly quiet here, and he slows his pace to match it, silence for silence, as he stalks his doe, hunts his bride, seeks his queen.

She is right where he thought she’d be, bathing in the same pool she found him in, those many months ago, the steam writhing and curling and drifting as the snow falls down to melt on the water’s surface. Shireen floats on her back. Her breasts and flat belly, the tops of her thighs exposed, and he swallows, feeling for all the world as if he has stumbled upon some water goddess, she looks that unearthly beneath the muted light of the moon glowing from behind the clouds. With a long, humming sigh she exhales all the air in her lungs, sinking below the surface, her breath bubbling up from under.

He creeps closer, already untying the top laces of his tunic, already shrugging out from under the cloak. Therefore he is half undressed by the time she surfaces, standing in the middle of the pool, a mermaid statue in the center of a fountain, a piece of art upon which he feasts his eyes. Wiping the water from her face, she opens her eyes, and if she’s surprised to see him, she gives nothing away, only smiles at him, sinking in the water to her shoulders, watching him as he kicks off his boots, unlaces his pants and steps into the water with her.

They are experienced with one another now, and she comes to him with the skill of a seasoned lover, standing again, swimming with measured strokes towards him. She slides her warm arms around his neck and her legs are soon to follow, ankles hooking at the base of his spine, pressing her body to him in every meaning of the term. She can tell he’s hard for her, and she wastes no time moving her hips, lowering a hand to guide him inside, and when he fills her completely she moans, head tilted back, hair dragging in the water. He tips his head forward, following her movement, to lick and kiss and nip at her exposed throat, remembering the first night she was here when she laughed so openly, and he had wanted to touch her, even then.

“I love you,” she breathes, and he starts to move, starts to love her back, holding her tightly to him with a hand on her back, a hand beneath her arse. His toes dig down in the soft earth at the bottom of the pool, and he anchors himself, holds himself steady as she lifts herself in his arms only to sink back down, as her nails work his back, as they fill the godswood with more than just silence.

“Say it again,” he begs, voice rough, and the ghost of his breath on her shoulder raises gooseflesh. “Tell me again, my queen,” he begs. She rights her head and kisses him, digs her fingers into his hair, pants out the words.

“I love you. I love you. I love you."

 

 

Winter is still here, but it is calmer, nothing like the storms that chased her here nearly six months ago. There has been talk of spring coming, perhaps within the next few years, but southern though she may be, by birth and by blood, in her heart she is feeling more and more like a northerner. Never has she felt it as much as she does now, standing before the heart tree, gazing up into Rickon’s steady and serious eyes.

Ravens were sent out shortly after the wildling attack, and the north was scoured with Manderly, Mormont, Flint and Stark forces, Rickon managing to ride on a patrol just a month after his leg was stitched up. With the wood and the roads safer, they were next able to send word out that there was to be a wedding at Winterfell, of a princess to a king, uniting through their marriage the north with the rest of the realm. But Rickon and Shireen know that the north will never dabble in the politics and intrigue that slither together down there like snakes in a pit. He has stolen his woman and she knows she’ll never have to go south again.

So she stands in the godswood, a delicate silver crown on her head, glittering with jet stones, Baratheon black, standing before Rickon who wears a simple circlet of silver that goes perfectly with his gray cloak, trimmed with rabbit fur that is whiter than snow. Words are spoken and vows are sworn, and when Gendry, standing in as the only other person with Baratheon blood able to attend, moves to gently remove the cloak of her colors, she shivers, not from the cold, but from the heat in Rickon’s eyes when he steps forward, his arms a circle around her as he draws his cloak over her shoulders, fastening it with a direwolf pin at the hollow of her throat.  _A much happier moment than the first time he cloaked me,_  she thinks, and she smiles.

He cups her face in his hands and bends, dropping his head to kiss her, slowly, reverentially, as it is announced that they are wed. She presses her palms to his chest, opening her mouth to him, before sighing and smiling, throwing propriety to the wind and flinging her arms around him. He wraps her in his arms and lifts her as snow begins to fall, cold minute kisses of winter, letting her know she belongs here, that winter and the north are welcoming her home.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OMG thank you all so much for reading and for crushing on Rickon and Shireen along with me. I hope you liked the ending and I hope I did justice to these two. I LOVE THEM omfg.


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